In a marketplace saturated with tactics, hacks, and quick fixes, it’s easy to confuse motion with progress. But most business growth challenges aren’t tactical—they are foundational.

Organisations that struggle with sustainable business growth often aren’t short on ambition, ideas, or even executional energy. They’re short on clarity—clarity about what they’re offering, to whom, and why it meaningfully matters.

One way to cut through the noise is to bring commercial decisions back to a deceptively simple equation:

Growth = (What + Who) + Why + How

While not all encompassing when it comes to solving business growth challenges, it is a practical framework for aligning commercial intent with operational delivery. Whether you’re developing a new proposition or reviewing an existing one, this lens helps identify where business growth traction is likely—and where it’s not.

(What + Who): Solve for Relevance

These two elements of the formula are positioned in brackets for a reason. As with any equation, we start here. And the relationship is often circular, meaning that you need to tweak the ‘what’ and the ‘who’ in relation to each other until they fit perfectly.

Depending on your specific scenario, you may start with the existing ‘what’, or you may start with a ‘who’.

The What

Often businesses focus on the tangible product or service that they sell, for example: We sell printers. But that perspective can be limiting, because customers don’t really buy printers.

What customers are really buying is not the product itself. They are buying solutions to their problems or desires. In the case of a company selling managed print services, for example, the decision-maker is buying business continuity — and the mental bandwidth that comes with not having to think about printing problems on a regular basis.

The solutions that customers are buying, is essentially a bundle of relevant benefits representing the proposition of the business. Strong propositions are rooted in insight. Not just what a product is, but what problem it solves. The deeper the understanding of the problem, the more powerful is the value can be created, communicated and delivered.

The Who

Getting specific about the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) that you serve is equally critical. It’s tempting to describe customers with broad demographics or aspirational generalisations, or worse, trying to target ‘everyone’. But clarity comes from narrowing the focus:

• Who is most acutely experiencing the problem that you solve?
• How are they currently solving the problem?
• How does this solution solve their problem in a better way?
• Where does this problem and solution fit into their daily lives?

A tightly defined ICP lays the groundwork for commercial focus and market momentum.

+ Why: Solve for Differentiation

The “why” refers not to a businesses purpose in the Simon Sinek sense (though that has its place), but to why someone would choose your business or proposition over another to solve their problem.

This question invites a clear-eyed look at competitive alternatives and asks: What are we genuinely better at than other alternatives, and does it matter to the customer?

This is where your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) comes into play. Your USP is the distinct value you offer at the intersection of:

• What your customer values deeply
• What competitors struggle to deliver
• What you are operationally strong at

That overlap is where credible differentiation lives—and where commercial momentum starts to build. From here, a compelling positioning can take shape, anchoring not just marketing, but also sales and customer experience design.

+ How: Solve for Delivery and Impact

Finally, the how. This has two layers.

1. How You Deliver the Value

This is where the parts of your business model that generate the value comes into focus. The systems, processes, partnerships, and underlying cost structures that support your proposition don’t just determine operational efficiency — they shape your capacity to scale profitably. Growth isn’t just about selling more; it’s about delivering consistently and sustainably.

That requires clarity on your key activities—the things your business must excel at to create and deliver value. It depends on the key resources that enable those activities, whether that’s technology, talent, or proprietary IP. And in addition, it requires alignment with the right key partners—those who extend your capabilities or reduce friction across the value chain. All of these feed into your cost structure, which, if not intentionally designed, can silently erode margin and stall growth.

If a business can deliver the same perceived value at a lower operational cost — or with greater consistency — it unlocks new headroom for margin, reinvestment, and scale. Which is why the ‘how’”’ isn’t an afterthought. It’s where sustainable growth is either built, or stifled.

2. How You Communicate the Value

Even the most thoughtful proposition can falter if the the customer fails to understand that this proposition can solve their problems i.e. if the messaging is not landing. This second ‘how’ is about translating your value into language your customer instinctively recognises.

It’s not about shouting louder. It’s about being clear—and consistently so.

At the heart of effectively communicating your value is your positioning. Simply put, positioning is your USP translated into customer language. It’s the piece of mental real estate you aim to own in your ideal customer’s mind.

When that positioning reflects real customer priorities and and considers competitive context, everything downstream becomes easier. It shapes your messaging strategy, guides your communication channel choices, and ultimately directs how marketing campaigns and tactics come together.

Sustainable Business Growth Isn’t Magic. It’s Methodical.

This formula isn’t intended to be the only way to think about business growth. But in practice, it helps leadership teams spot where a lack of clarity is hampering growth, leading to making better commercial decisions.

The reality is: business growth isn’t usually about finding the next new hack or tactic. It’s about tightening alignment between what you offer, who you offer it to, why they should care, and how you show up.

Solve for those variables, and business growth will stop feeling elusive—and start to become much more predictable.

If this formula resonates and you’d like to explore how it could apply to your business, feel free to get in touch.

Whether you are refining an existing proposition or rethinking your growth strategy from the ground up, sometimes a structured, outside perspective can make all the difference.