Most businesses blame the market when growth stalls.
“Too much competition.”
“Prices are under pressure.”
“The economy’s slowing.”
Maybe. But more often, the problem isn’t out there. It’s internal.
At RJP Consulting, we’ve seen this play out across sectors—from fast-growth tech firms to long-established industrials. The real blockers? They’re almost always inside the walls.
💣 The Real Growth Killers
Here are the blind spots we see most often:
1. Unclear Accountability
You’d be surprised how many leadership teams can’t answer: “Who owns this outcome?”
Responsibilities are diluted. Projects are run by committee. No one is tracking what actually gets delivered.
According to a Harvard Business Review study, 95% of employees don’t understand their company’s strategy. That disconnect kills momentum.
Growth doesn’t stall because of a lack of strategy. It stalls because nothing gets over the line. And before you even start delivering—have you defined what you’re delivering? What does success look like? Is everyone aligned? Or is the strategy just words in a slide deck?
2. Misaligned Incentives
If your sales team is incentivised on volume, don’t be surprised when margin erodes. If your product team is measured on features shipped, expect complexity to spiral.
Incentives aren’t just internal, either. Many firms forget to align external incentives—channel partners, resellers, or distributors often don’t have a compelling reason to push your offer.
Growth is a system. If one part’s out of sync—it drags the whole machine down.
3. Product Bloat and Poor Go-To-Market Execution
That “strategic” product line you launched five years ago? It’s now a resource drain. It barely sells. But no one’s had the nerve to kill it. Even worse—many new products are launched with no real go-to-market strategy.
Here’s what’s typically missing:
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- Pricing: Set too high to move volume, or too low to drive profit
- Promotion: Marketing isn’t equipped with the right messaging or assets
- Placement: No defined channel strategy; is it direct, partner, or hybrid?
- Enablement: Sales teams don’t understand the value proposition, or where it fits in the portfolio
According to McKinsey, only 40% of product launches meet their business objectives. A poorly executed launch isn’t just a miss—it’s fuel for internal friction. And often, the issue goes back further: Was the business case robust in the first place? Was enough resource allocated to meet customer expectations? Or did a product make it to market because someone “really believed in it”?
4. No Deep Sales Analysis
We often hear: “Sales are down.” But when you dig deeper, the business hasn’t actually looked at the numbers.
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- Which segments are declining?
- Which reps are consistently missing targets?
- Which products are being discounted to move volume?
- What’s the conversion rate on inbound leads vs outbound efforts?
Without clear sales performance insight, it’s guesswork—not growth strategy.
5. The Execution Gap
You’ve got a great strategy. The board signed off. You even held a town hall.
Six months later…
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- No one’s tracking delivery
- Teams have reverted to BAU
- Half the initiatives are stuck in “pre-scoping”
Strategy doesn’t fail at the whiteboard. It fails when no one owns the messy middle.
🔎 So How Do You Fix It?
✅ Step 1: Run a brutal internal diagnostic
This isn’t about pointing fingers—it’s about surfacing the friction that’s holding you back.
Ask:
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- Where are we creating drag?
- What complexity are we tolerating?
- What workarounds have become “normal”?
✅ Step 2: Re-align incentives and decision-making
If the KPIs are wrong, the outcomes will be too. Make sure your growth drivers are reflected in how teams are rewarded and resourced—and make sure external stakeholders are aligned, too.
✅ Step 3: Rationalise before you invest
More growth doesn’t come from more products. It comes from a sharper, cleaner offer and a business that’s easier to scale.
✅ Step 4: Make delivery visible
Put ownership in black and white. Review regularly. Celebrate progress. Kill what’s not working.
🚀 How We Help
At RJP Consulting, we help organisations see what’s really in their way—and fix it.
We:
- Challenge leadership assumptions
- Run honest internal capability and sales performance reviews
- Remove complexity from product portfolios
- Build go-to-market strategies that work across pricing, promotion, placement, and sales enablement
- Develop realistic business cases that align to internal resource and market expectation
- Build execution plans that drive action—not just meetings
Bottom Line
If growth has stalled, don’t start with the market. Start with the mirror.
Because most businesses don’t lose momentum from the outside. They lose it from blind spots they stopped noticing.