Organizations that want to shape their growth ambitions tackle this on a grand scale from time to time. The familiar marketing mix with the 4-P's - Product, Price, Place & Promotion - is dusted off, customer journeys are made, innovation gurus blindly followed but unfortunately, often without the intended growth. Why is that? They see to grow all growth components as independent, specialist teams get to work but they always think in silos instead of seeing it as communicating vessels where the hydrostatic laws of nature still apply. That every part is interconnected and they influence each other directly. Organizations that have achieved sustainable growth take the following five components as their starting point:

1. Goal Setting: What do you want to achieve, what do you dream about? What do you get out of bed for every morning, in short, what are your ambitions? What challenges does your organization face, what stands in the way of your success? Discover in this step what you want to realize, think big!
2. Positioning: determining specific core target groups and which markets with their associated competitors apply
3. Proposition: what incomparable offering do you offer? Develop complementary services in addition to the product range. With these services you are truly distinctive and avoid competing on prices and discounts. What credible promise do you make to your customers?
4. Distribution: through which channels can you approach your customers and gain access to them? Don't follow the standard conventions, your competitors are already doing that.
5. Sales: everything but everything should be about the buy button, about sales. By using upselling, cross-selling and deep-selling you can get more out of your existing customers. If you lack customers then acquiring new customers is your focus.
6. Approach: achieving your goals and ambitions requires a dose of motivation and focus. In this step you will describe concrete activities and plans that you will use to realize all the steps above. What do you strive for each day (planning) to realize your goals? What is your willingness and time schedule to achieve real success? In this phase, dare to really claim your unique position and proposition, become the authority in your market!

If you work out these six components in the right way and bring them forward consistently with small micro steps every day, you will see that growth will come naturally. This simple growth method does not require any major investment, you only need to give the six components the necessary sincere attention every day.

PS: the sailboat canvas and other useful tools are on this website