The leadership team had just finished presenting the plan for next year, and a board member said, more or less, "That's fine. Now tell me how you grow if we don't do another acquisition." Nobody had a good answer.
The people in the room were capable. The problem was that for ten years now, growth had been something you purchased. A bank bought a bank. A consulting firm bought a competitor two states over. A private equity group rolled four engineering firms into one, and the revenue chart went up and to the right. But now that the deals are slowing down, you can't private-equity your way to your growth target.
So the board's growth question is sitting on the leadership team's desk, waiting for a new answer.
Purposeful Organic Growth
Organic growth is the revenue that comes from the clients you already serve, the referrals they give you, and the new relationships your people go out and build. Every firm has some of it. Few firms have a plan to develop it on purpose.
In most of the companies I've worked with over thirty years, organic growth either fell out of the sky or fell on two people. Both arrangements don't hold up. The sky stops delivering in a soft market, and the two people eventually want to retire.
Think of acquisition and other advertising strategies as renting growth. You get the revenue right away, and the payment comes due every month in cost per acquisition, integration, culture, and debt service.
Organic growth is ownership. It builds equity, it stays when the market turns, and nobody can take it away. I've told clients for years that job security is in purposeful organic growth, and I believe it more today than I did in 1996.
Organic growth comes from three things working together: People, Process, and Systems. And you have to build them with intentionality.
People
Start with who is on the team and what you expect of them. The people who you need to grow the practice are rarely the ones with the business development title. They're a project manager, a senior engineer, a partner who was promoted for technical work and never told that the promotion came with a growth expectation. Find them. Give each one a written annual goal.
Then ask yourself what percentage of your principals carry a written business development goal today? If the answer is "I'd have to check," that's the first thing to fix. Hire for the behaviors you need, train for the missing skills, and stop waiting for a rainmaker to appear.
Process
Most firms we work with don't have a written sales process or a playbook that helps professionals learn how to build their business. A useful sales process should help the team prepare for meetings, establish expectations, uncover meaningful problems, understand investment parameters, identify decision makers, and agree on clear next steps.
It should also help leaders determine which opportunities deserve additional time and resources.
Pipeline
A successful team qualifies opportunities early, gains access to the right people, addresses difficult issues before the proposal, and secures clear agreements throughout the process. It also becomes less dependent on passive sources of growth by proactively seeking referrals, client expansion, and strategic partnerships.
What to do this month
Pull three people who want to grow the practice with purposeful organic growth into a meeting before Thanksgiving. Write a 2027 growth playbook with the resources, relationships, actions, and budget needed to start building your people, process, and pipeline.
Put the first weekly review on the calendar for the first full week of January, and hold each other accountable for making the changes needed to be proactive about growth.
A firm that nurtures organic growth takes ownership of its future. If you'd like help building your playbook, let's chat.
