Bryce Tychsen Understanding the Path to Sustainable Business Growth

In summary, grow your business right by being able to find opportunities, prove and test them to see if they will work, create connections, and track the results as you go. Business development experts can guide you in scaling your strategic opportunities into sustainable, repeatable growth—not a one-time win.

Companies hit a great quarter and then plateau. It all came from one big concept, one new customer, or a hot market—and then when it was gone, so was the growth. Sticky growth is discovering that, validating that, and pumping it up.

That's what business development is for. Sales is about closing today's deals. Business development is the forward-looking, incremental view of tomorrow and involves strategic planning around the new channels, new partners, new markets, and new customer segments that emerge over time. Companies that make this core function a priority are more agile and less wasteful.

Bryce Tychsen is a business development strategist that helps organisations and companies convert their strategic opportunities into tangible business growth. This article walks you through Tychsen's process and how a business's executives can implement it.

What is business development, and how will it help my business?

Business development is the generation of business ideas, initiatives, and activities in order to develop and expand a business, increasing its revenues and its profits. The goal of business development is to identify and implement growth opportunities.

Because markets are always changing. A firm that relies solely on today's customers and today's channels is at risk whenever there's a change in customer demand, where the competition begins to play a bigger role or technology starts to have an impact. Business development diminishes that risk by adding new growth areas before old ones disappear.

The difference between sustainable growth and a temporary spike is as follows:

• Strategic fit: the opportunity fits with the vision and strategy.

• Measurable: progress can be quantified through quantifying standards.

• Repeatability: the result can be duplicated and measured.

Who is the expert behind this approach?

Bryce Tychsen is an entrepreneur and business developer that specialises in finding and capitalising on growth opportunities. His main entrepreneurial motto: Growth should be strategic. Instead of pursuing every opportunity that comes his way, he helps clients locate the opportunities that will make a difference and produce tangible results.

The same logic applies to a startup on the up-and-up and an established organisation or nonprofit with a broader mission. Leaders at each stage need to know where they are going, which opportunities to pursue, and where they stand in their journey.

What approach do industry experts use in identifying a company's strategic growth opportunities?

Identifying chances is a task of study and intelligence. Every business developer has a procedure—not a talent.

• Get an assessment. Review existing clients, revenue sources, type of business, and areas for improvement.

• Conduct market research. Discover unmet needs, new trends, gaps in the products/services of your competitors, and niche markets.

• Give the opportunities a ranking according to return, cost, and risk, as not all the opportunities are worth taking.

• Test before you buy: pilot tests and small experiments allow a pilot to fly the concept without committing a substantial amount of money.

• Maximise results. Grow what you can and leave the rest alone.

What  Bryce Tychsen  is executing can be built from such a purposeful evaluation. And it is what the eyes are gravitating to time and again: those areas that can show us how to preserve the most time, money, and team efficacy.

Why does measurement play a key role in growth sustainability?

You can't manage what you can't measure. So many teams just want to get something done—run a meeting, run a proposal, run a campaign—but they are not prepared to say what it is that they want to do.

The best measurement begins with metrics that matter to the business. The right set of metrics will be very specific to what your goal is, but in general you can use:

• New revenue from a specific initiative

• Customer acquisition cost vs. customer lifetime value

• Pipeline growth and conversion rates

• Leads or sales sourced through partnerships

• Market share in a targeted segment

"The Holy Grail is only there when it hits the numbers," says Bryce Tychsen. Each discovery meeting and weekly numbers review, companies can shift gears and pour more into the areas where the results are emerging and fade away where they aren't.

What ways do partnerships foster growth?

Partnerships are one of the least expensive ways to develop. A successful partnership gives each side additional customers, some time, or competence that would take considerably longer or possibly be less likely on their own. It could possibly speed up entry into a new market and can boost status.

Most good partnerships will have one or two of these characteristics. The goals are shared—everyone is working towards the same goal. Every partner is clear about his or her role and contribution from the outset. And they're based on trust—most good partnerships take years, not months.

Bryce Tychsen's relationships are a long-term proposition. I think that taking the time to build a solid relationship and looking for a shared value will be worth its weight in gold. And relationship-based companies get first dibs on new concepts.

What are the errors that hinder the growth of a company?

Even though these very same people know very well how to take care of themselves, they keep going wrong over and over again. They only need the right knowledge.

• Avoid planning for too many opportunities at one time. When you stretch yourself in too many directions, you are limiting the power of every single one of your efforts.

• Your fit is gone. When a great opportunity seems to fit, but when the firm is not, you will detract your focus and put in a lot of effort at an enormous cost.

• No data. Can't track if you're not tracking.

• Focus on Acquisition at the expense of retention and expansion.

• Growth is a campaign. Growth takes work. Campaigns won't do.

Here's the same answer for everyone: a handful of solid ideas, executed well, and followed by an honest look at the results. That phrase is important to Bryce Tychsen because it helps root growth programmes in reality.

How can organisations build a growth mindset?

"Technique alone won't sustain growth, because culture also matters. Growth is more predictable if the leaders foster curiosity and embrace testing if they view the failed test as data."

Some practices that contribute to this are:

• Set the goals for the growth that you are expecting and pass the goals to the respective teams.

• Seek these moments on a daily basis rather than leave them solely for planning.

• Reward learning as well as wins.

• Make decisions based on data and remain flexible.

As these habits gain momentum, business growth is everyone's or each department's responsibility and no longer the task of one individual or department.

Frequently asked questions

What is Bryce Tychsen's profession?

Bryce Tychsen is a business development expert and strategic thinker who recognises opportunities and takes organisations and companies through the process from realisation of them to measurable results.

What is sustainable business growth?

A growth that a firm can sustain for an indefinite period of time without losing resources or being dependent on a single group of customers or customer base.