The traditional concept of growth is simple. Sell more widgets (or provide more services), control costs and boost the bottom line.

In today's marketplace, though, growth is never a simple task. Asking questions—and including the not-so-typical ones—is essential to successfully walking (or running) along the growth path.

How will the company be sold?

How could dual pricing help?

What should we do with new employees?

How should we strategize for the exit of senior employees?

What are we doing now that may not be a future part of the business?

What extras should we provide clients?

Are we willing to take a chance?

Leading Edge experts and their clients share their answers (and results) to the too-often unasked questions.

How will we depart?

Inspec-Sol Inc. finds growth just happens for the North American engineering firm. "Our clients imposed growth on us. They kept bringing the work," says CEO Sal Oppedisano.

So how hard does Inspec-Sol, a client of Leading Edge Alliance firm Fuller Landau, have to work for growth? Very. Its challenge is not in finding new business, but finding a trained workforce to handle the assignments.

"If you can't staff the growth, you can't service the client," says Oppedisano.

Unlike industries that can outsource their work to other countries, Inspec-Sol engineers must work here. "We need a local, geographic presence," Oppedisano explains.

Understanding the challenge it faced, Inspec-Sol knew significant growth could only occur if the company culture changed.

"That is the challenge of challenges," Oppedisano says.

It found an answer in the idea that no one works forever—at Inspec-Sol or anyplace else. By embracing that, the engineering firm is better planning for its future.

"My role is to find the next president of the company," Oppedisano says. Only in his late 40s, he is not planning on retiring any time soon.

So what's the rush to find a replacement? Oppedisano says Inspec-Sol believes a succession plan for leadership and senior members of the staff is a must for the business to keep going.

Inspec-Sol has witnessed dozens of companies leave the market in part because no structure existed to support the business when the top executive left. In fact, as Inspec-Sol considers acquisitions, it always asks how the target has identified who will replace executives when they depart.

"If there's no answer, that's not a good acquisition and we walk away. They're making money, but it's a one-person company," Oppedisano says.

Inspec-Sol's interest in succession as a growth strategy is not just for the top position. Its focus is on all shareholders in the company.

Several years ago, the shareholders met to discuss how to ensure the company's growth and survival even after their departures. They were proud of the company and wanted its continued existence even if they were not working there. The result was a "very aggressive new partner program," as Oppedisano calls it.

Now when new engineers are hired, they are given a mentor and are shown a track to partnership that comes more quickly than might be possible elsewhere. "We introduce them to the idea that there is a future here," Oppedisano says. "Younger shareholders ensure continuity in succession."

But in a company where all the shares have been sold to existing partners, one must be prepared to sell shares for a new partner to buy them.

So Inspec-Sol partners came up with an understanding that they must divest themselves of all their shares by age 65. Of course, that doesn't necessarily end their involvement in the company. They can stay on as consultants or work reduced schedules, for example.

As an added commitment, Inspec-Sol's executive committee, which includes four to five shareholders, does not include any senior people who might be more apt to change the rules.

In the last seven years, Inspec-Sol has expanded from 100 employees in three offices to 400 employees operating from 17 offices across Canada and the United States. While its growth was created directly by geographic interest and through acquisitions, it's the succession plan that is a key component of its overall strategy.

How can our products cost less?

"Customers look at price," says Joel Lebewitz, a partner at Lurie, Besikof Lapidus & Co., a Leading Edge Alliance firm.

Despite the labels "new and improved" on many products, today's marketplace has only a few truly new inventions. Most products, from cell phones and cars to macaroni, have reached their maturity and thus are sold by many companies. To compete, many companies focus on price.

Large stores like Wal-mart and Target already are imposing price cuts on their suppliers.

With an environment of potentially shrinking margins, successful companies must ask themselves from where the next business will come and where should they be operating that they aren't.

"It's a little scary for domestic products to explore emerging markets in the world," Lebewitz says. But, he reminds, remember "years ago it was scary to go across three or four states from the business' home base."

The "tremendous" emerging wealth in the growing middle class in countries such as China and India offers opportunities. Lebewitz, though, suggests companies sell in those emerging markets and be directly operating from those countries where possible.

Lebewitz, who leads the Chinese Strategy Group at Lurie Besikof Lapidus, says China has become a manufacturing capital—offering ways to build profitable factories that can produce products at the right price, right quality and be sold for profit.

Lebewitz explains that the potential in China exists because the cost is anywhere from 3 to 10 percent of U.S. skilled labor. In addition, for every one person employed in China, 1.5 persons are unemployed. "The government is eager to create more jobs," he says. The result is the country will offer incentives for businesses to expand, thus allowing those businesses to offer better pricing.

U.S. companies' interest in the China market can grow through several avenues, creating an entity and operating there, working as a distributor for a China company or setting up a joint venture with a China business.

But there's still another way to compete on pricing. Lebewitz says dual pricing may be an avenue to pursue.

Here's how it might work. Say, a manufacturer of safes opens a factory in China. The factory makes safes for U.S.-based client Diebold but with minimal changes to the product (a different handle and lock), the manufacturer can make the safes for its own or less-known brand (Shashung for example) and price it $150 less.

"It's basically the same safe," Lebewitz says. "The company can manufacture safes for Diebold on Tuesday and safes for Shashung on Wednesday."

A Minnesota-based grocery chain, Kowalski's, understands the need to compete on pricing, Lebewitz says. It displays a range of products in a category—for example, from Hershey's chocolate kisses to Godiva chocolate. It then labels a "best value" among the group (typically a mid-price option) to attract consumers. As such, the supermarket gains leverage in negotiating price breaks because some brands are eager to have the "best value" recognition on the shelf.

What do we already do?

Leading Edge Alliance member Yeo & Yeo began 35 years ago with one main and two small offices. Growing the accounting business meant bringing in new clients after taking them to lunch or meeting them at a business group.

"We didn't have marketing, no related entities, no niches," says Richard Wentzell, a principal who has been at the firm since its beginning.

While the firm still networks at business organizations and takes prospects to lunch, it's operating with so much more. Yeo & Yeo now has eight offices in Michigan, has spun off several entities and has focused on niche markets.

Wentzell says the firm acquired other firms in areas where Yeo & Yeo already operated or desired to have a presence. "We have eight offices, but they don't feel like satellites," he says.

Yeo & Yeo also found growth in setting up separate companies. For example, it had the staff to support in-house technology needs so it created Yeo & Yeo Computer Consulting LLC, which serves the firm's needs as well as clients'. In addition, the firm has a separate real estate arm, which owns four of its eight office buildings, Wentzell says.

The firm also examined where its strengths lie, as well as the needs of the area, and found niche markets, such as medical consulting and billing, where demand and business has grown "leaps and bounds," as Wetzell explains it.

In expanding the firm, Yeo & Yeo also has expanded its thinking about its staff, investing in both accounting and non-accounting staff.

"The growth has meant everybody is involved. It's much more than the old accounting office mentality," Wentzell says.

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