Staying Ahead of the Hammer: How to Build and Manage Your Business to Achieve Long-Term High Growth

WINNER Pacific Rim Book Festival Best Business Book 2016
WINNER Amsterdam Book Festival Best Business Book 2016
SILVER MEDAL WINNER 2016 Global Ebook Awards Non-Fiction Business

Staying Ahead of the Hammer uses the analogy of a “Hammer Thrower” to help the reader understand how they can successfully manage the relationship between different parts of their business to support growth in sales.

The first key premise of the book explains how long term High Growth can only be achieved if sales and the organisation’s ability to support them are in relative balance. The second premise is that the business’s leaders must look forward and plan the future. This can only be achieved by having the right information available. This enables them to make increasingly accurate predictions about future sales, which in turn will indicate the necessary changes in the organisation needed to maintain growth momentum.

The book identifies the High Growth problem and then looks at Seven key areas of a business and explains how each of these areas can prevent or undermine High Growth and then goes on to explain what can be done to overcome these challenges.

These seven areas are Vision, Culture, Strategy and Planning, Talent Management, Financial Management and Control, Organisational Efficiency and Business Development.

The book is written so that each chapter is self-contained, allowing readers to look first at those areas which are causing them the most problems. Nonetheless, the book emphasises that all businesses are highly integrated entities and that improvements in one area will inevitably spill over into others.
The book also uses a number of tools and techniques to help the reader address specific problems and these are available to readers as a free download.

Testimonials

"This is so well written - with the business owner in mind. Anyone who runs a business cannot help but benefit from the insights and proven concepts laid down in this book. I like the structure and the straight forward concepts that business owners can easily get their heads around and implement straight away. This is a DOING book - easy to read - easy to do. Highly recommended reading for all those ambitious entrepreneurs and business coaches out there."
Simon Teague, Partner
"Your Best Year Yet"

“Your book is great. Well done.! I particularly like the Sales Forecasting and Psychometric chapters.”
Charles Smee, Owner
Transaction Focus

"This is a very well thought out guide to the complex issue of maintaining sustainable high growth in your business. Laurence draws on his extensive experience to develop a model, complete with tools and frameworks, to help business owners suffering from growing pains see the wood from the trees. Managing high growth is not easy - as the owners of the thousands of businesses that burnt brightly for a brief moment and then failed will attest. Anybody with the ambition to create a high growth business and survive to reap the extensive reward will find this book invaluable."
Peter Quintana, Director
High Growth Knowledge Company