How SMEs Can Apply 6 Proven Strategies for Superior Revenue and Profit Growth
Hi, I’m Aby
Welcome to The Strategic Billion Dollar PEN, your weekly business strategy newsletter designed to equip SME business owners and entrepreneurs with the clarity, confidence, and competitive edge to grow and scale with purpose—successfully.
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How SMEs Can Scale with Strategic Growth Levers
Introduction
This week’s newsletter concludes our SME business growth series, which has explored the strategic levers SMEs and entrepreneurs can use to build strong, growing businesses and achieve sustainable competitive advantage — ultimately scaling toward 7‑, 8‑, 9‑, and 10‑figure success.
For our final edition, we draw on insights from the Harvard Business Review podcast: 6 Strategies for Growth Outperformance. These strategies highlight how businesses can become top performers among their peers — consistently achieving superior revenue and profit, underpinned by disciplined growth.
What makes these strategies especially powerful is their adaptability to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Unlike large corporations, SMEs often have the agility and commitment to strategic change that allows them to implement these approaches quickly and effectively.
SME Blueprint: Recipe for Growth and Scale
This blueprint highlights six strategies that can help SME business owners and entrepreneurs build and grow their businesses. These six interconnected strategies are what set top‑performing companies apart in the research.
Applied specifically to SMEs, these strategies provide a pathway to becoming industry top‑performers — if owners adopt the right mindset, commit to a long‑term view, and execute bold strategies that outpace their competitors.
1. Build an Innovation Culture and Mindset
For an SME, this means making rapid, small-scale innovation a core function, not an occasional project.Empower your team to allocate 10% of their time to test new ideas and technologies (e.g., a new AI-powered customer service chat). Focus investment on digital capabilities that directly enhance your niche expertise, turning your small size into an advantage by moving faster than big competitors.
2. Commit to Sustainable, Inclusive Growth (ESG)
Focusing on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles helps SMEs build long-term brand resilience and attract talent and purpose-driven customers because this isn’t about massive carbon offsets. It’s about visible, local commitment:
SME Takeaway:
- Environmental (E): Sourcing local materials or reducing waste in your immediate operations..
- Social (S): Offering superior employee benefits, supporting local community initiatives, and ensuring an inclusive hiring process.
- Governance (G): Maintaining transparent finances and clear, ethical sales practices.
3. Grow Your Core with Data, Analytics, and AI
The core business is responsible for about 80% of growth. SMEs must use affordable digital tools to refine and maximize this core.
SME Takeaway:
Use simple, off-the-shelf SaaS solutions (CRM, accounting software) to capture and analyze customer data. Use that data to identify the most profitable customer segments and focus all sales/marketing efforts there. For instance, use a simple AI tool to analyze customer feedback and quickly spot high-priority product improvements
4. Expand into “Right to Win” Businesses
SMEs should not chase every trend. They must only pursue adjacent businesses where their existing competitive advantage guarantees success.
SME Takeaway:
Leverage your SME’s unique trust, specialized knowledge, or local network to launch an adjacent service.
Example: A specialized manufacturing SME expands not into a new product line, but into consulting/training services based on the technical expertise they already possess, turning internal knowledge into a new revenue stream.
5. Shrink to Grow When Necessary (Dynamic Resource Allocation)
This is about disciplined, continuous self-assessment to ensure limited SME capital and time are directed only to the most impactful areas.
SME Takeaway:
The owner/leadership must regularly ask: “What activity, product, or client segment is consuming the most time/money for the lowest profit?” Be courageous and prune underperforming processes, outdated technologies, or low-margin services to free up resources for the high-growth strategies.
6. Mobilize People to Capture Value Quickly
In a small team, organizational alignment is paramount. Every employee must understand and own their role in the growth strategy.
SME Takeaway:
Foster a flat, entrepreneurial culture. Ensure the strategic vision is clearly communicated weekly. Tie a portion of employee incentives or bonuses directly to the key metrics (KPIs) of the new growth strategies to ensure fast, coordinated execution.
Flight 78910™ SME Spotlight: Rusian Kogan
WATCH Video Feature: He Made $450M Selling TVs for $0.01 | Ruslan Kogan
Ruslan Kogan, founder of Kogan.com, identified an unmet customer need in the market and, through persistent PR marketing and the right technology platform, built a business with strong growth potential and long‑term competitive advantage.
He continued to scale by leveraging customer insights gleaned from data, offering the right products at the right price, and combining innovation with effective promotion and distribution. This approach helped Kogan become one of Australia’s leading online businesses.
SME Takeaway
1. Build an Innovation Mindset
Kogan established his brand using innovative concepts and tools. Selling TVs online via eCommerce and eBay was groundbreaking at the time. He funded his start‑up through credit cards, eBay pre‑sales, and AdWords campaigns to cover operating cash flow. PR marketing positioned Kogan as a challenger brand, reinforcing his innovative mindset and helping him build one of Australia’s most recognizable retail brands.
2. Commit to Sustainable Growth
From the outset, every capability was designed to create long‑term competitive advantage. While growing on eBay, Kogan simultaneously built Kogan.com into a standalone brand using AdWords and PR.
He differentiated as a low‑cost, one‑stop website, building customer loyalty. Leveraging this reach, he expanded product categories from 2 to 50 million items, launched Kogan Mobile and Kogan Credit Card, and introduced subscription models. By maintaining low‑cost pricing and fostering an internal culture focused on efficiency, Kogan created a sustainable competitive edge.
3. Grow Your Core with Data Analytics and AI
Kogan evolved the business by harnessing customer search data, demand insights, and service feedback. This guided category expansion and ensured offerings aligned with customer needs.
4. Expand into the Right Businesses
With a growing customer base and consumer data insights, Kogan shifted to a direct‑to‑consumer supply chain model. This efficiency brought more traffic, deeper insights, and expansion into high‑margin categories. Capital was allocated strategically into adjacent opportunities, creating additional value.
5. Shrink to Grow (Dynamic Resource Allocation)
During COVID‑19, Kogan expanded from 13 to 38 warehouses to meet demand but faced excess inventory. He cut prices, absorbed profit hits, and re‑engineered operations — reducing inventory from $200M to $40M while focusing on high‑demand categories. This leaner model strengthened sustainable growth.
6. Mobilize People to Capture Value
Kogan built a culture of continuous improvement, mobilizing teams to work efficiently and effectively. He developed strong local sourcing and supplier networks in China, creating competitive advantage in manufacturing and product availability. This proved critical during COVID, when Kogan sourced products competitors could not. Going public gave employees ownership and access to financial success, further motivating them to create value for the company.
Strategic Summary
To scale like Kogan, SMEs should:
- Innovate boldly — challenge norms with creative funding, marketing, and positioning.
- Commit to sustainable growth — build capabilities that create long‑term competitive advantage.
- Leverage data & AI — use customer insights to guide expansion and offerings.
- Expand strategically — move into high‑margin categories and efficient supply chains.
- Adapt resources dynamically — shrink or re‑engineer when necessary to stay lean and profitable.
- Mobilize people & partners — cultivate a culture of ownership, efficiency, and collaboration.
Apply the Playbook
Every Blueprint and Spotlight in this newsletter is a strategic lever.
Which one will you use to build a stronger, more competitive SME?
Strategic Takeaway
This blueprint shows how SME business owners and entrepreneurs can aim to achieve a strong growing business with a long time competitive advantage in their industry. However achieving this growth is not accidental but as a result of a courageous mindset that priorities bold long term investments in innovation ,
Conclusion
The Bottom Line for Excellence
Growth is the holy grail of any business — and even more so for SME business owners and entrepreneurs. In today’s competitive world, with fickle customer behaviour and constant market shifts, every business must treat growth as a priority.
Ruslan Kogan exemplifies this mindset. His brand was built on growth principles, and all six strategies in the blueprint were implemented to elevate Kogan into a major player in Australian retail. In summary, he executed audaciously — thinking creatively, taking calculated risks, and mobilizing resources quickly across a portfolio of growth bets. This journey transformed Kogan from an SME start‑up into a publicly listed company and a formidable force in the industry.
References
- Six business growth strategies that drive performance | McKinsey
- He Made $450M Selling TV’s for $0.01 | Ruslan Kogan – YouTube
- Achieving growth with leadership mindsets | McKinsey
- The CEO Growth Imperative | Growth, Marketing & Sales | McKinsey & Company
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Until next week—
Set bold strategy. Set big targets. Take massive action. Measure what matters.
About the Author
Aby Rufus
Business Investor Strategy Expert Entrepreneur with an MBA in Strategic Planning—offering billion-dollar strategic solutions for SMEs.
