Reach your growth targets despite global uncertainty

Geopolitical uncertainty, rising energy and raw material costs, and volatile stock markets are resulting in more cautious customers and pressured margins. Many leadership teams are now working under intense time pressure. 

In this environment, companies cannot afford to make the wrong decisions or spread their investments too broadly and thinly. The wrong priorities cost time, money, and, not least, personal energy for the leadership team.

That is why I believe business leaders need to be unusually disciplined in how they drive growth. This is the moment for proven, reliable ways to strengthen demand, sharpen the offer, and create faster commercial impact.

I see four areas as particularly critical for companies that need to deliver growth despite external headwinds:

1. Update the customer picture
2. Sharpen the portfolio
3. Improve the business and brand structure
4. Supercharge the customer experience with AI

The first question leadership teams need to ask is whether they are truly working from an up-to-date view of the customers they want to win.

One of the most common pitfalls in commercial development is an outdated picture of the core customer. When the market changes quickly, customers’ priorities, risk appetite, and decision patterns change too. What drove purchase decisions 18 months ago may not drive them now.

Still, I often see companies become paralyzed by the fear of losing relevance with one type of customer, even when that customer no longer has real growth potential.

Continuing to prioritize based on old segmentations, market logics and assumptions about what customers value will lead the organization in the wrong direction. And if the ideal customer is only a reflection of the existing customer, the very engine of growth is missing.

• If the ideal customer is only a reflection of the existing customer, the very engine of growth is missing.

The companies that succeed in tougher times are often those with the clearest insight into where demand actually exists. Which customers are most relevant now? Which needs have become the most urgent? Which values are actually driving new purchase decisions?

Strong examples over the years include Volvo Cars, which identified a growing global segment of car buyers who valued a subtly luxurious car that fit well into their everyday lives more than the high-tech performance many competitors focused on. Locally, Clas Ohlson also understood that the definition of the “DIY customer” was changing, from the traditional handyman to a more urban profile looking for convenient solutions.

The ideal customer is not a soft marketing question. It is a very concrete growth question.

The second area is the portfolio. In strong markets, offers can sometimes carry themselves even when they are not clearly differentiated from competitors. In weaker markets, portfolio weaknesses quickly become visible.

My experience is that many companies underestimate how much growth is lost in portfolios that are unclear, overloaded, or more internally logical than externally competitive. When the offer becomes too broad, too generic, or too complex, it becomes difficult for customers to understand why they should choose you.

That is why leadership teams need to be willing to ask some fairly direct questions: What in the portfolio is driving real demand? What is needed to strengthen our competitiveness? What consumes resources but contributes little to growth? Are some offers cannibalizing others?

• What consumes resources but contributes little to growth? Are some offers cannibalizing others?

As an example, Nordnet grew quickly despite tough competition by launching a different kind of complementary service. The base product, an investment platform, was attractive to savers who were tired of traditional banks’ hidden fees and agendas, but it was not unique.

Nordnet then launched Shareville, a community for private investors where customers could find inspiration by following other savers’ portfolios. The add-on service became a significant part of the total value equation for Nordnet’s customers and contributed strongly to its growth.

Growth comes when you offer the right things in a way that makes the value clear to the customer, in a way no one else does.

The third area is something I often see slowing growth more than companies themselves realize: internal complexity.

When business areas, offers and brands evolve over time, the result is often a structure that works internally in the short term but is much harder to understand from the outside. Customers rarely care how the organization is built. What matters is that they can understand what the company offers, why it is relevant, and how the parts fit together.

Is there really a clear benefit for the customer when the group, the business area and the product name all appear in the packaging?

When that usefulness and clarity are missing, there are commercial consequences. Sales power weakens, investments become fragmented, and the overall market image becomes unclear.

• Sales power weakens, investments become fragmented and the overall market image becomes unclear.

Sometimes, for example, a new brand can be the main decisive factor in successfully growing a strong product. Coca-Cola had offered sugar-free soda for many years, but it was only when Coke Zero was created that the product reached an entirely new target group. Amazon Web Services was able to scale its extremely successful cloud services solution by separating the business under the AWS brand.

My view is that companies often see offer and brand structure as a matter of order. In reality, it is a growth question. The identity of the offer must be highly relevant and create significantly more added value than complexity.

The fourth area is the customer experience, and using AI in a way that is actually noticeable to both existing and new customers.

Here, I think the conversations are both far too few and far too focused on ChatGPT and LLMs as another channel or a replacement for search. That is nowhere near enough for growth. The question is not whether your company “shows up” in LLM responses. The question is whether AI helps the customer understand, choose, buy, upgrade and stay faster.

The companies that succeed best use the technology to create a real difference in customers’ everyday lives. They make it easier to find the right thing, more relevant to interact and faster to get value. That is where AI starts to create measurable commercial impact.

At the end of last year, fashion retailer Zara implemented a new try-on experience in its digital channels. The virtual fitting room allows customers to create a synthetic avatar based on their own images and dress it in real products from Zara’s assortment. In just under three months, the service had more than 7 million user sessions across 43 markets – a clear sign of usefulness.

What leadership teams need to avoid now is building solutions that feel advanced internally but make only a limited difference externally. In a year like this, AI solutions that are useful to the customer should be prioritized.

• In a year like this, AI solutions that are useful to the customer should be prioritized.

To me, the conclusion is clear. This is not the year for broad bets or for hoping the market will turn. Swedish business leaders who have already promised growth need to lean on proven plays: an updated customer picture, a sharper portfolio, a clearer structure and customer experiences that create real value.

The companies that reach their targets in tough times are rarely the ones that make the most optimizations or incremental moves. They are the companies that choose best – with clarity on where to grow, how to win and what to leave behind.

Johan Snällfot
Senior Growth Expert and Head of Product, Lynxeye