When we think of acquisition as a growth strategy, we tend to think of buying an entire business.
That can be a powerful point of leverage to leap ahead, but it’s also expensive in terms of cash, attention, and energy.
However, there are other forms of acquisition where the cost isn’t as high.
As an example, a friend of mine acquired a business partner. There wasn’t any cash exchanged hands. The value that the partner brought was sales. They had created a large pipeline of leads. My friend was able to use his business to serve those leads.
This happened very quickly, over the course of a couple of months and was one of the investments that transformed his business. Had he tried to develop the equivalent lead flow it might have taken him years.
Another example is that we have an account manager that does sales. For a relatively small team like mine, an experienced account manager is out of our budget. However, an experience account manager on a part-time basis is something that we can afford.
For whatever key constraint is in your business, if it was Jeff Bezos’ problem, how would he spend money to overcome it?
Is there a version of that acquisition you could do if you were creative about it?
Featured image is a “Croeseid”, the first minted gold coin with standardized purity implemented by King Croesus. Croesus was known for his wealth, wisdom, and being the first Greek king conquered by the Persian Cyrus the Great. By Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com, used under CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74443198