The 7 key stages of customer experience are represented by different containers. For each of these stages, your team identifies which engine components help contribute to growth. They can then track the status of these activities using color coding.

How the Growth Engine Board helps your business

To grow your business, you need to build at least one growth engine that really works. If your business is currently underperforming, there are likely one or more areas of your engine that are actively limiting its overall performance.

Using this board, your team can determine which of the 7 stages need improvement, identify your current activities in each area, and work collaboratively to discover more effective initiatives.

By focusing on concrete and actionable components, the board can get your company on the same page, optimize performance, and drive growth for your business.

How the Growth Engine Board works

1) Name the project and set your engine topic

In the ‘Project’ field, enter the name of both your company, and the product line for which you’re designing the engine. Use the ‘Engine’ field to specify the topic or use case it’s designed for: Marketing Automation Software, Hotel Booking Platform, etc.

2) Choose your traction milestone

The design of your engine depends on the traction milestones you want to achieve. Trying to achieve 10k USD monthly revenue will require different engine components (channels, offers, features etc.) compared to a 1M USD monthly revenue target.

3) Add key growth components to the 7 stages

Needability 🙋 Make sure you build something people want

Use this area to track projects focused on understanding potential customers and validating your product concepts and new ideas: Market Research, Prototyping, Interviews, Surveys, Lead Generation Tests, MVP Development, or Business Modelling.

Findability 🔎 Guarantee the right people find you

Add components that ensure your target audience can discover the products and services your engine’s designed for: Direct Sales, SEO, SEM, Social Media, Social & Display Ads, Events, Email Marketing, Trade Shows, Offline Ads, etc.

Likeabilty ❤️ Ensure people like and try your product

Dedicate this container to key components that inform and educate potential customers about your products – and motivate them to engage: Website Pages, Case Studies, Blog Articles, Social Proof, Subscribe for Updates and Book Demo features, and free offers like e-Books, Webinars, Free Accounts or Trials, etc.

Workability 🛠 Help people use your product

In this area, include components that show how to use your products and derive maximum value from them: Account Creation & Onboarding, Help & Success, Notifications, Plugins & Integrations, and various product-dependent usage milestones like Browse Store Items, Manage Shopping Cart, Dashboard & Reports.

Payability 💰 Entice customers to purchase

Here you can add premium offerings and other components designed to increase customer lifetime value: Core Offers, Up/Next/Cross-Selling Offers, Renewals, Cash-Flow Timing Tactics, Bundles, etc.

Shareability 📣 Encourage people to spread the word

All components that increase virality and word-of-mouth belong here: Partner Programs, Viral Features, Community Building, Publicity, Speaking Engagements, Existing Platforms, Influencer Marketing, Business Development, etc.

Scaleability 🤖 Automate what can be automated

Reserve this area for components that increase the productivity of your team, broaden the volume of your engine, and accelerate the speed of your engine’s flow; include both processes and software tools in areas like Work Management, Engine Automation, Content Creation, Finance & Billing, Legal, etc.

About the author

FWDstack helps startups, SMEs, startup accelerators and other businesses achieve success by helping them build growth engines that really work. The Growth Engine Board is part of their business acceleration toolkit. Join the FWDstack acceleration platform.