Generating Revenue Growth Ideas at Evergreen Executive Education, Llc (a)

Abstract

The new business development manager for Evergreen Executive Education has been asked by the firm's CEO to develop a list of as many revenue growth ideas as he could over the next week. The COE saw this task as critical for the new services initiative that he had been hired to lead. The list would be an inventory of possibilities for ongoing consideration as well as a catalyst for other professionals in the firm to generate additional ideas. The CEO had described the task for him was to keep his primary business-development mission in mind, and to think big and out of the box. Excerpt UVA-G-0644 Rev. Feb 15, 2019 Generating Revenue Growth Ideas at Evergreen Executive Education, LLC (A) As the newly hired business development manager for Evergreen Executive Education, LLC (EEEL), Curtis Koch had just finished his second week with the firm. As he settled behind his office desk after a meeting with Martha Hires, the firm's CEO, he took in the park-like view outside his office window and a smile spread across his face. Over the course of his first two weeks, he felt he had achieved a pretty good grasp of the firm's personnel, programs, and client portfolio. Indeed, the point of the meeting with Hires had been mostly for him to give her a sense of what he had learned about the firm. She had asked a few pertinent questions, listened intently to his answers, and, in the end, she had expressed her pleasure and affirmation that he had done his homework well and had learned so quickly. The genesis of the smile-inducing moment he was experiencing had come near the end of his meeting with Hires. She had asked him to develop a list of as many revenue growth ideas as he could over the next week. They had to be potentially viable, although not specifically proven. They had to be briefly described, although not fully fleshed out. She wanted him to imagine, to brainstorm, and to bring to bear all his experience, prior reading, and creativity to craft the ideas. She had expressed no illusion that all his ideas would be doable, but she had also expressed optimism that many of them would be actionable when studied further. She saw this task as critical for the new services initiative that Koch had been hired to lead. The list would be an inventory of possibilities for ongoing consideration as well as a catalyst for other professionals in the firm to spark their own creativity for generating additional ideas. The way Hires had framed the task for him as he was leaving was, with his primary business-development mission in mind, to think big and out of the box, think what if and why not? . . .