5 Ways to Kick start Growth, According to a New Report

Research has identified 5 areas of improvement for companies that have stalled on their way to the middle market.

More than 2 million U.S. companies are stuck. Having endured the perils of starting up, they seem likely to survive. But they can’t drag themselves above $10 million in annual revenue, generally considered the floor of the middle market. If just 10 percent did so, they would create 17 million good jobs, based on calculations derived from Census Bureau data.

So how do those companies get unstuck? That’s the question TrueSpace, a Denver-based consultancy and research organization that is focused on post-startup entrepreneurs, set out to answer, in partnership with global analytics company Gallup. Its report, released Thursday, is the result of a study combining four years of fieldwork in 150 businesses–including extensive interviews with CEO-founders, customers, and departing employees–and a survey of 2,500 randomly selected companies to verify the results at scale. 

The study concluded that among companies stalled between $2 million and $10 million, five conditions have the biggest influence on a company’s success–even more so than its leader or industry. TrueSpace found those five conditions were fully developed in just 14 of the study’s 150-company sample set–the same 14 that, at the end of four years, had dislodged themselves from the slow- or no-growth mire and shot into the middle market. (Three subject companies failed over that period.)

When Gallup rolled out an assessment based on those conditions to the 2,500 companies in the survey,it also found a close correspondence with revenue growth. “One insight here is that it is very hard to just look at the basic facts of a company and know whether it is going to perform well,” says Jonathan Rothwell, Gallup’s senior economist. “You have to get inside how it is structured and run.”

Read more: https://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/growth-conditions-middle-market-gallup-truespace.html?cid=search