Durable Growth

Is your business truly enjoyable to do business with?

Not friendly. Enjoyable - the kind of business clients renew without thinking, refer without being asked, and stay with when a cheaper bid shows up.

You want to grow, and you've tried the quick fixes: the lead generator, the appointment setter, the campaign that was going to change everything. Things aren't much better. Durable Growth is built around a different question, and it leads to a different way of running a company.

A business parable

Ray Dettmer built Ridgeline Grounds & Property Services from one truck and fourteen accounts, and for thirty years his answer to every problem was more - more calls, more accounts, more crews. Then he hires Cal Hollis, a salesman who has spent a career watching what the numbers game does to good people, and together they build a plain way of seeing what is actually working: which clients, which people, and which decisions carry the company.

Over four seasons at Ridgeline you'll watch them learn to

• tell the clients worth keeping from the ones quietly draining the business, and what to do about each;
• find out what the best clients would never say to the owner's face;
• fix the job before replacing the person in it;
• read both columns - the activity everyone counts and the results nobody looks at;
• grow without betting the company on a number that came with no plan;
• and build a business a buyer would want - whether or not the owner ever decides to sell.

Then the principles, in the author's own words

The story is followed by The Durable Growth Principles: thirteen lessons drawn from Dave W. Hansen's thirty years in sales, marketing, and leadership - office equipment, advertising, and managed IT services - each with what to look at in your own numbers. Right clients. Right team. Right leadership.

Read it if you want to grow, and want the growth to last.

Who this is for: owners and leaders of small and mid-sized service businesses - and the sales managers and salespeople who work for them - who know the business could be stronger and are ready to look at the whole of it, not just the top of the funnel.