1: Find out what your customers really want—not what you want them to want.
Profitable, sustainable organic growth starts when you have a deeper understanding of customers’ needs than your competitors. If someone tells you otherwise, be careful: They might be misguided in other areas as well.

2: Conduct customer interviews remotely. (It’s more effective than you think.)
Consider web conference-based customer interviews for feedback. You can use a service such as Live Meeting, WebEx or GoToMeeting. Although not as effective as face-to-face meetings, it is better than no meeting.

3: Get everyone listening to the voice of the customer.
Most businesses chalk up hundreds of face-to-face customer meetings during the course of a year, so as sales reps, technical service reps and others go about their normal duties, why not train these people to become voice of the company experts? They’ve already gained the customer’s trust, they know the customer’s language, and there’s no extra travel cost.

4: Use OPK (Other People’s Knowledge).
Many shops are stuck in the past in important areas. Why? There are two reasons: First, more work is being required of fewer employees. Most of us want two things out of our jobs—to contribute and to learn—but in today’s pressure cooker, there is little time to learn and apply fresh thinking. Second, useful knowledge is exploding. Each year, mankind generates enough new information to fill half-a-million Libraries of Congress. Who can keep up? Fortunately, we have access to exciting new tools to help us process and use the information. You can learn a lot by tapping into associations/publications for benchmarking and shared learning; and searching for books and subject matter experts online.

5: Bring your training in-house.
Beyond lower costs associated with in-house training, there are big advantages—including the training can be customized for your company and industry, and everyone learns the same new language and methods at the same time, which greatly improves implementation. Here’s the best part about aggressively moving forward with your small-budget growth plans: Your competitors probably won’t do the same. So when the economy picks back up, you’ll be ahead of them by leaps and bounds.

Thinking in new ways may do more for your future growth than spending-as-usual would have.

Source: http://www.moldmakingtechnology.com