Tips to Growing Your Small Business
Learning how to grow your business isn’t just a goal, it’s a necessity for your business’s survival as well as your economic well-being. Many business founders come up with a good idea, but fall short and are unable to scale their companies growth. So what can you do to get your business beyond the beginning bare level?
Consider trying one or more of more of these growth strategies. All have been successfully used by other businesses and, with some planning and investment, will work for you as well!
1. Timing is Everything
The timing of your service or product must be right in the marketplace, if the market isn’t ready, then you need to possess the drive and the willingness to sacrifice in order to make that product or service work.
You will need to choose to either wait for the market to catch up (requiring the resources to survive during that period, and accepting the risk of emerging competition), or you’ll need to adjust your offering to something more palatable to the market’s current readiness.
Smaller businesses have the advantage of being able to make choices and implement changes without the exhaustive process and conflicting points of view that slow down major corporations. You need to anticipate your market and customers’ needs and constantly innovate to stay ahead. This requires leadership with agility, resilience, and a willingness to fail and to recognize that failure quickly enough to adapt and move forward.
2. Brand, Brand, Brand
Today’s economy requires business leaders to create positive memories for customers and partners. For example, Whole Foods shoppers are loyal and believe they are embracing a healthy and socially conscious lifestyle by shopping at the stores. If you want to create a scalable business, you have to understand just how crucial it is to build brand equity. The emotional attachment that links customers to your product, as opposed to any other, translates into sustainable growth.
Here are some simple rules to connect, shape, influence, and lead with your brand:
Choose your target audience:
The surest road to product failure is to try to be all things to all people.
Connect with the public:
Your objective is to make your audience feel an emotional attachment to your brand.
Inspire and influence your audience:
An inspirational brand message is far more influential than one that just highlights product feature functions.
Reinforce the brand image within your company:
Make sure employees at every level of your organization work and behave in a way that reinforces your brand image.
3. Scale Your Sales
Creating a unique product and a unique brand isn’t enough, you also need a repeatable sales processes to create a healthy business. It’s one thing to sign up a few customers, it’s another to identify, design, and implement repeatable sales and customer delivery processes. You’ve successfully created a repeatable and scalable sales model when:
- You can add new hires at the same productivity level as yourself or your sales leader.
- You can increase the sources of your customer leads on a consistent basis.
- Your sales conversion rate and revenue can be consistently forecasted.
- Your cost to acquire a new customer is significantly less than the amount you can earn from that customer over time.
- Your customers get the right product in the right place at the right time.
4. Embrace Technology
If a small business can identify a genuine need, technology likely exists to fulfill that need both locally and globally. There are few barriers to entry in an age where anyone with wireless can cheaply and quickly access the enabling technologies needed to execute their business model. It comes down to creating the right operating blueprint that connects the dots between your business model and the application of accessible technologies.
5. De-Stress for Success
Many small business owners find managing and maintaining a successful business to a very stressful part of their life. Sometimes an overworked business owner can find his or herself overwhelmed and unhappy. This can cause you to become unhealthy, and potentially un-motivated. Keep in mind, you can’t create a healthy business and a healthy work environment if you yourself aren’t healthy.
Invest some of your time to adequately take care of your physical and mental health. This not only will keep you running, but your business as well. Remember, mental health is not just about going to the gym to let off steam, it’s about achieving a state of mental calmness to see you though the challenges you face in your life.
We hope you’ve found this guide to growing your small business helpful! Remember, maintaining a business can be stressful, and there are some areas you may not have time for. For help with marketing, design, SEO, and other business needs call us at DMA Solutions!
