By Larry Goddard, Laurence Franklin and Jennifer Goddard

Picture this: you’re leading a hard-driving middle-market business, dealing with challenges regarding growth, daily operational fires, demanding customers, relentless competitors, a few challenging personalities on the team, and an email inbox that never stops refilling.

It’s like riding a bike uphill, in the rain, while trying to balance a stack of fine china. You’re still moving — but the pace is slowing, the effort is constant, and the road ahead looks steep. In other words, you’re not stopped… but you might be stalling.

Middle-market leaders are a special breed. You’ve built something substantial, you care deeply about its future, and you’re resourceful enough to thrive without the deep pockets or expansive support systems of larger companies. But there’s a catch: growth at this stage can feel like a game of trial and error — with expensive, exhausting “learning experiences” along the way.

That’s where SOARgrowth™ comes in. It’s not another one-size-fits-all management fad. It’s a structured, practical, budget-friendly, ROI-focused framework designed specifically for middle-market businesses — built to help you shift gears, find your momentum, and go from stalling to SOARing by growing faster, aligning your team, and executing with precision.

Why Middle-Market Businesses Need a Different Kind of Growth Process

Mom and pop businesses can get by with hustle and instinct.

Big business can throw armies of analysts and consultants at problems.

Middle-market companies? You’re in the “awkward middle” — too complex for small-business tactics, too lean for enterprise-level extravagance.

Even the most capable middle-market companies can hit points where progress feels more difficult than it should. You may be facing challenges such as:

• Pushing hard but gaining little momentum
• Struggling to stand out in a crowded market
• Weak brand recognition or trust
• Growth bottlenecks from capacity limits or talent gaps
• Internal resistance that slows change and execution
• Inconsistent execution on strategic initiatives
• Outdated systems or technology slowing decision-making
• Pricing pressures eroding margins
• Changing regulatory, taxation and tariff landscape
• Limited cash resources that leave little room for error.

At the same time, you have enormous opportunities. You’re nimble enough to act quickly, established enough to leverage your market position, and smart enough to know that random acts of growth aren’t the answer.

SOARgrowth gives you a clear route forward — one that identifies and steers you toward your Downhill Rides, pinpoints your highest-impact growth Opportunities, aligns leaders and teams, and energizes the organization.

The Four Pillars and 12 Key Growth Areas of SOARgrowth

At its core, SOARgrowth organizes your growth efforts around Four Pillars — the fundamental building blocks successful business strive to strengthen and keep in sync:

Sales & Margins — Grow revenue while protecting and improving profitability.

Organization & Culture — Motivate and align people, roles, and values.

Accounting, Finance & Technology — Make better decisions with clean data, smart finance, and the right tools.

Responsiveness & Execution — Move fast, deliver consistently, and adapt without drama.

These pillars form the foundation of a structured, comprehensive approach to driving business growth. By addressing all aspects of a business—not just sales and margins but also the underlying operations, team dynamics, and financial strategies—SOAR provides a balanced and holistic path to growth.

Within those Four Pillars sit the 12 Key Growth Areas — the practical levers that actually make growth happen. They range from fine-tuning your sales strategy and margins… to strengthening leadership and culture… to making sure your tech, finance, customer satisfaction and operations can keep up when growth kicks in.

Imagine the leap from knowing how to ride a bike to riding one uphill in the rain while balancing a stack of fine china — success comes from multiple diverse activities working in harmony, not any single one alone.

One company we worked with had strong sales but kept missing delivery dates because their supply chain lagged behind. Another had a tight, loyal team but was losing margin on every deal because of inconsistent pricing. In both cases, fixing one growth area created a cascade of wins across the others.

The Four Pillars give you strategic clarity. The 12 Key Growth Areas give you operating precision — the confidence that when you pedal, you’re actually moving forward, efficiently.

The SOAR Growth Engine – The Key Driver of Strategic Sales Growth

If the Four Pillars and 12 Growth Areas are the bike frame and tires — giving you balance and stability — the SOAR Growth Engine™ is the gears and chain that convert your effort into powerful forward motion.

Many middle-market companies pedal hard every day, but not all that effort translates into sustainable progress. The SOAR Growth Engine ensures you’re in the right gear for the terrain ahead, focusing your energy on six high-return levers:

1. Wallet Share – The “easy gear” that delivers quick momentum by selling more to customers who already know and trust you.
2. Market Share – Shifting into a gear that lets you accelerate in your current markets, overtaking competitors and widening your lane.
3. Winback – Downshifting to re-engage past customers, using less energy than climbing after brand-new ones.
4. New Products – Adding a fresh gear — offerings that meet emerging customer needs and open new paths.
5. Stretching – Switching to a gear built for distance, expanding into new customer segments, sales channels, or geographic markets.
6. Non-Organic Growth – The turbo-boost option: acquisitions, partnerships, or joint ventures that let you cover new ground fast.

Each lever has multiple sub-categories, creating dozens of possible growth opportunities. The SOAR Growth Engine organizes them into a structured, manageable, and accountable system — so you always know which gear to use, when to shift, and how to keep the wheels turning toward your most profitable goals.

Managing Growth Gravity: Base Business Loss & Base Evolution

Before pulling those levers, you must account for two forces that can silently impact progress:

• Base Business Loss – Revenue erosion from existing customers through churn, smaller orders, less frequent purchases, or pricing concessions.
• Base Evolution – The natural drift in your customer base over time, shaped by external forces like industry trends, inflation, or your customers’ own growth or decline.

Ignoring these is like ignoring a slow leak in your boat — you might be rowing harder, but you’re still taking on water. The SOAR Growth Engine helps plug those leaks and keep your growth trajectory positive, real, sustainable, and measurable.

Downhill Rides – Turning Gravity into Growth

If riding uphill in the rain while balancing a stack of fine china is the grind of middle-market growth, then a Downhill Ride is when you crest the hill and gravity starts working with you. A Downhill Ride is what happens when market trends, customer demand, your internal strengths, and your strategic priorities all line up. Every push on the pedals carries you further and faster because the slope is finally working in your favor.

Sometimes you’re lucky enough to stumble onto a Downhill Ride; other times you’re savvy enough to spot it and steer toward it. Either way, take the win — and stay vigilant to keep the momentum rolling. And if you don’t have a Downhill Ride, making it your mission to find one could be one of the smartest moves you ever make.

Examples of Downhill Rides:

• Targeting a market that’s already growing fast — and offers strong margins.
• Launching a product just as the industry shifts toward that exact solution.
• Entering a region where your ideal customers are eager and underserved.

When you’re on a Downhill Ride, adoption happens faster, margins improve, your team meets less resistance, and every growth move delivers a stronger ROI.

The opposite of a Downhill Ride is an Uphill Ride. Grit and perseverance have their place, but too many businesses burn energy climbing the wrong hill.

Examples of Uphill Rides:

• Fighting for share in an oversaturated market with declining demand.
• Pouring resources into a product line that’s slowly becoming obsolete.
• Going head-to-head with larger competitors who can outspend you.

In an Uphill Ride, every sale takes longer, costs more, and chips away at margins. The real danger? Missing the chance to shift your focus toward opportunities where momentum is already on your side.

SOARgrowth helps you spot the Downhill Rides worth accelerating — and the Uphill Rides you should exit or avoid. That way, your pedaling turns into real momentum, your wins stack faster, and growth feels less like survival mode and more like a smooth, steady ride toward your goals.

Crafting a Value Proposition That Pulls Customers Toward You

A Value Proposition is the clear, concise answer to a customer’s unspoken question: “Why should I choose you over anyone else?”
It’s not a slogan or tagline — it’s the core promise that defines the unique value you deliver, the problem you solve, and why that matters to your ideal customers.

For middle-market businesses, a strong value proposition is a growth multiplier. When it’s compelling and well-communicated, it:

• Differentiates you in crowded markets where products and services can look interchangeable.
• Attracts the right customers who value what you do best and are willing to pay for it.
• Builds internal clarity so every employee can articulate and deliver the company’s edge with confidence.
• Improves efficiency in marketing, sales, and customer conversations because everyone is telling the same, resonant story.

Without a clear value proposition, businesses risk competing solely on price or chasing customers who aren’t a good fit — which can lead to lower margins, wasted effort, and stalled growth.

Turning Strategy into Results: Execution is Everything

The Growth Engine, Downhill Rides, and a compelling Value Proposition give you a winning strategy — but growth only happens when you execute.

Sales execution means strong leadership, the right people in the right roles, clear hunter/farmer balance, effective lead generation, and incentives that drive the right behaviors.

Operational execution means delivering on every promise — with reliable production, agile supply chain and logistics, responsive customer service, and a relentless focus on satisfaction and retention.

Strategy sets the direction. Execution turns the pedals. Both are essential for momentum.

The Backbone of Growth: Accounting, Finance & Technology

Growth isn’t just about selling more — it’s about scaling profitably and sustainably. That requires rock-solid financial and technical foundations.

Accounting & Finance provide the clarity to make smart decisions — from accurate, timely numbers to cash flow forecasting, capital allocation, and risk management. Without them, even strong sales can mask profit leaks or looming trouble.

Technology — from core business systems to AI-driven tools — boosts productivity, improves visibility, and unlocks insights that guide better, faster decisions.

In SOARgrowth, these aren’t back-office afterthoughts. They’re integral growth enablers — giving leadership the confidence, control, and capability to move faster with less risk.

Hidden in Plain Sight – Unlocking the Growth That’s Already There

One of the most exciting parts of working with middle-market companies is discovering how much growth potential is already within reach. In fact, many of the best opportunities aren’t exotic, risky, or far off — they’re often relatively simple, sitting just beneath the surface.

Sometimes it’s a loyal customer base that’s eager to buy more —  if only given the chance. Other times it’s a process tweak that could shorten onboarding by days, unlock unused warehouse space, or reduce waste in a way that quietly adds six figures to the bottom line. It might be a winback opportunity — a former customer who left years ago and could be brought back with the right outreach — or an underutilized service that, with a small change in positioning, could open up a steady new revenue stream.

These opportunities aren’t rare; most businesses have dozens of them scattered across sales, operations, finance, and customer experience. The challenge isn’t their scarcity — it’s spotting them amid the daily noise, then focusing on the ones that will deliver the greatest impact fastest.

This isn’t about saying a business has been doing things “wrong.” It’s about recognizing that in the day-to-day whirlwind, it’s easy for even the sharpest teams to miss opportunities that become obvious once you pause, zoom out, and look through a different lens.

Example: A long-established distributor we worked with was laser-focused on winning new accounts. But when we analyzed their order history, we found that one of their oldest customers was buying a product line from a competitor — simply because they didn’t know the distributor carried it. One phone call, a quick quote, and a pricing agreement later, that customer started ordering thousands of dollars’ worth of that product every month. No ad spend. No new hire. Just a hidden-in-plain-sight opportunity turned into a recurring revenue stream.

With the right ideas, passion, flexibility, planning, and structure, those hidden opportunities can quickly turn into visible results — often without massive investment or disruptive change. SOARgrowth helps bring them to light, prioritize them, and turn them into wins you can see in both your top and bottom lines.

How the SOARgrowth Process Works

SOARgrowth isn’t theory — it’s a practical, step-by-step process designed to move you from “good intentions” to “great results”:

1. Discover & Diagnose – Using tools like the SOARcard™ Growth Assessment, you get a clear view of your current performance in all Four Pillars and the 12 Key Growth Areas. You’ll see exactly where you’re strong, where you’re at risk, and which growth levers are most likely to deliver the biggest wins.
2. Prioritize with Purpose – From more than 700 potential growth and improvement initiatives, the SOARgrowth process begins with two focused assessment surveys and a series of targeted workshops. Together, they help you and your team pinpoint the high-impact opportunities — so your resources go where they’ll create the fastest, most measurable impact.
3. Build the Plan – Turn priorities into actionable steps with owners, timelines, and measurable outcomes.
4. Get Buy-In – Engage the team emotionally and intellectually to create enthusiasm, alignment and accountability.
5. Gain new insights – Leverage SOARgrowth’s modules, content library, peer groups, webinars, and Growth Coach guidance to spark new ideas, refine strategies, and avoid common pitfalls.
6. Execute & Adapt – Use platform tools, peer groups, and coaching to stay on track and adjust as you go.

The SOARgrowth Community That Accelerates Every Step

• 1:1 Growth Coach Support – Personal guidance for assessment debriefs, opportunity ranking, plan-building, and accountability check-ins. Coaches help you pressure-test assumptions, sharpen ROI cases, and keep execution on pace.
• Live Webinars & Office Hours – Group sessions with Growth Coaches for deep dives, Q&A, and quick troubleshooting. Bring current hurdles, leave with practical next steps and proven playbooks.
• Peer Groups – Cross-industry confidential peer cohorts that provide support, benchmark performance, share what’s working, and trade templates, scripts, and tactics. Expect candid feedback, fresh ideas, and built-in accountability.
• Content & Resources Library – A curated, on-demand hub with:
  • Tools for rapid analysis, assessment and course-correction
  • Articles & Blogs for strategy clarity and leadership messaging
  • Short Videos and voice-over walkthroughs for fast team education
  • Tutorials and how-to guides for step-by-step implementation
  • Books & e-Books for deeper learning

This community + content layer turns a solid plan into sustained momentum—giving you expert help when you need it, peer pressure (the good kind) to keep moving, and ready-to-use materials to equip your team quickly.

Why SOARgrowth Works

• Structure + Flexibility – A proven framework that adapts to your business realities.
• Whole-Business View – Sales doesn’t live in a silo; everything connects.
• Focus on ROI – No wasted effort — every action ties to measurable results.
• Built for the Middle Market – Designed for companies that need high-impact growth without enterprise-level overhead.
• Your Plan, Your Pace – You can run SOARgrowth substantially on a DIY basis, keeping costs and disruption low, while still having the option to tap into Growth Coaches, webinars, peer groups, and resource libraries whenever you want expert input or an extra push.

From Stalling to SOARing – Building Speed, Strength, and Sustainable Success

If the climb has felt slower lately, the effort harder, and the road ahead feeling all too much like the one you’ve already traveled, you might be stalling — still moving, but not breaking free.

With SOARgrowth, you get the clarity to choose the right path, the gears to match the terrain, and the momentum to ride well beyond where you thought possible. Out of more than 700 growth and improvement levers in the SOARgrowth framework, most middle-market companies find several that can trigger meaningful gains in operating performance, customer satisfaction, revenues, and profits.

When the right priorities are in place, your team aligned, and the slope finally tilts in your favor, growth stops feeling like a grind. It becomes focused, energizing, and achievable.

That’s the shift — from effort without meaningful progress… to SOARing!

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