Inside Growth Street’s commercial bootcamp

Growth Street
Jul 25, 2017 · 5 min read

Part of the fun of working in a growing company is creating processes from scratch. Figuring out how things should work, and being able to implement them almost straight away, is a rare opportunity.

Over the last couple of weeks, we tried to live by this principle in running Growth Street’s first commercial bootcamp. We gave the different commercial teams in the business a chance to come together and work collaboratively every day for a single two-week sprint.

We wanted to address the tasks that hadn’t made it to the top of our to-do lists in previous weeks and months. Often, we’re unable to step back from the day-to-day grind and take stock: this sprint was a chance to do that.

We agreed to start by using our morning standups to nail down the improvements we thought we could make that day. Working through the afternoon in small teams, we would then tackle the myriad of different tasks and produce lots of short-term wins. At least, that was the plan…

Week one

The first morning’s briefing from commercial director Chris reiterated the key goals of the bootcamp. The main aim: to deliver a better overall experience for all Growth Street customers in just two weeks. We also wanted to change the team’s mindset.

After Chris’s briefing, people with urgent work to do returned to their day jobs while the rest of us analysed the master diagram of our current commercial processes, put together by business change analyst Edley. (Below is Edley’s original hand-drawn outline of commercial processes, which was to be overhauled over the fortnight:)

Edley’s original plan of processes for the commercial bootcamp

After a few hours of thinking and work, we had outlined many different processes and procedures which were ripe for addressing. The next job was allotting different tasks to specific teams to tackle over the course of the day.

One session saw head of marketing Shalom, alongside relationship managers and members of our operations team, compiling a list of all reasons why customers might withdraw from the approval process. This will be used to tailor how we deal with our customers and communicate with them in appropriate ways. Compiling these comprehensive lists for the first time just underscored the necessity of the task ahead.

Head of marketing Shalom (right) leading a session in week one of the bootcamp

As the week went on, we saw that the number of changes to come meant that really thorough documentation was essential. One or two new processes are easy for people to take on board. But we were going to address any number of commercial challenges at the same time. Having these changes reviewed, assessed and documented would make it infinitely easier for people to remember and take on board new principles.

Meanwhile, it was great to see commercial staff working cross-functionally, breaking down team silos. The spirit of the exercise allowed us to work through some scheduling difficulties. What’s the best way to pull a salesperson, a marketer and a relationship manager away from their work at the same time to address an important problem? The fact that the problem might be solved the same afternoon definitely helped…

As the end of week one approached, we were almost surprised that energy levels across the team were as high as on the first day. As well as addressing sales processes, we began to devote more time to holistic questions: how should we define and speak about our products to customers? Could we think about pushing through that kind of project, or would it consume too much of the bootcamp?

Standups took on a regular format, with Edley and Chris analysing the progress of the various daily tasks and making sure the previous day’s work had been completed. Three daily check-ins — first thing in the morning, at midday, and at the end of the day — made sure that everyone was up to speed with each task, the stakeholders and the progress that had been made.

We were looking forward to cementing the first few days’ progress with another stellar week.

Week two

We chose not to start the new week with a retrospective of the last week. Instead, we wanted to push straight on with the tasks that had been left over from the last few days, as well as looking ahead and gauging the feasibility of the remaining jobs that hadn’t yet been tackled.

Chris and Edley leading a standup during the bootcamp’s second week

Edley had begun to scope out ways to analyse the bootcamp’s successes and failures. He dove into regular meetings with Dylan, our business intelligence expert, attempting to quantify the impact of the many improvements we had been making to Growth Street’s processes.

We also welcomed two incoming team members during the second week of the bootcamp: Chan, Growth Street’s new Director of Sales, and Nicola, our first Head of Relationship Management. It was a great chance for Chan and Nicola to be part of processes being built from the ground up.

Midway through the week, the regular company all-hands meeting was devoted to the bootcamp. This gave our product and engineering teams a deeper dive into the bootcamp’s goals. It also let the leaders of some particularly impactful initiatives tell the company about their methodologies and the outputs of their projects.

The final days saw us frantically rounding up as many projects as possible, as well live-testing a couple of initiatives for the first time with customers. Chris and CEO Greg testified that the energy in the team over the two weeks had surpassed expectations. Although the work to refine processes will continue in the coming weeks, the sprint was unanimously seen as a real success, for the commercial team and for the company.

When asked about the bootcamp’s value, head of marketing Shalom said: “Looking at the commercial processes as a whole, it was so interesting to see how slight inefficiencies can compound to create more significant blockers and challenges.

“To me, the most significant outcome is that the whole team now has the confidence to confront the issues we face in our everyday operations. As a group, we know that we have the skills and tools to overcome these inevitable issues.”

Working cross-functionally, the various commercial teams came together more effectively than ever before. The dynamic process of constantly allotting new tasks every day meant that each team member contributed real value at different points. Involving the whole commercial organisation helps to make sure that policies and processes aren’t dictated by senior management. If you or your company are looking for a collaborative, productive way of delivering substantive change in a short timeframe, we can’t recommend our commercial bootcamp highly enough.

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