Growing your company is one of the most important goals to set for yourself as a business leader. It ensures that you and your staff are heading in the right direction with your goals, team morale is high, and you are working towards a more stable future.
Indeed, in the animal kingdom, it is thought that if you are not growing, then you are dying, and the same could be said for businesses. When you are in a growth mindset, it is not necessarily that you are constantly expanding your company (as this is impossible), but it does mean that you are searching for weaknesses to fix, strengths to build upon, and fresh opportunities to provide a service to your customers.
This continual quest to better your enterprise will eventually result in a healthier, more profitable, and more stable organization that can be relied upon to generate profits for the foreseeable future.
However, achieving consistent growth is far from easy. Although many brands chase it, relatively few achieve it with any lasting success because there are numerous hurdles to overcome as you try and take a small business and expand it.
For example, in the process of growing your business, you may lose the unique selling point that was so attractive to your original customer base. Alternatively, your available finances might become stretched too thinly by additional employee salaries and other investments, resulting in severe cash flow issues.
To prevent these problems and ensure your enterprise expands in a healthy way, this is the ultimate guide to growing your business:
Learn how to maximize your finances
You will find it impossible to grow your business without the effective management of your finances.
After all, investment is key to every aspect of your company – from paying your staff salaries to buying new production tooling or renting a larger office to accommodate your growing team.
If you neglect to regularly keep your corporate finances in check, then you are leaving money on the table – cash that could be better spent growing your company. Of course, given that you run a small business, you may not have a team of experienced accountants at hand to complete the work for you.
In fact, it may just be you managing your finances, which can cause issues if you are not skilled at finding financial loopholes, and being intelligent with your tax affairs, cash flow, and other monetary necessities. Therefore, if you haven’t already, dedicate time to learning how to maximize your finances – whether it is the total retained earnings formula or calculating your estimated yearly tax payments.
Not only will you find it easier to allocate your available funding to the right areas, but you are less likely to fall foul of any financial problems – such as failing to declare taxes properly, failing to pay employees on time, or running out of available funding altogether.
Interestingly, few small business owners anticipate the future success of their businesses enough, and so when a windfall of cash arrives, they fail to capitalize on it.
By learning more about how money works, you can invest the money you do earn wisely and ensure it only leads to further financial gain rather than a slump back into mediocrity.
Develop your brand identity
Your company won’t grow if no one knows about it – or worse, no one cares. One of the most critical actions you can take to ensure the growth of your business is to develop a distinct brand identity for your company.
The exact approach you take will depend on the type of offer you sell and the industry you are in, but the marketing fundamentals that underpin your brand identity remain the same regardless.
To develop a strong brand, reflect deeply on the values that your company strives to uphold and the target you set out to achieve when you set up the business.
No successful enterprise exists purely to piggyback on a thriving industry and make money. There should be a deeper motivation behind it that drives every corporate decision and the product you offer.
If you are struggling to pinpoint this, consider your personal motivations to be in business, your own moral compass, and targets in life that relate to your business. Indeed, injecting personality into your business is crucial for building a memorable brand.
This is especially true of small businesses, which may struggle to compete with larger organizations with considerably more to spend on a marketing budget. By deliberately placing your own personality at the heart of your brand, you will have the single quantity that is most precious to corporate marketers – individualism.
Create a simple business model
When you are trying to expand your business, the last thing you need is to be bogged down by trying to increase the production and delivery rates of various products or services – each requiring its own specialist team and tools to create.
Not only will this spread your available funding too thinly, but it will confuse your customer base. Successful brands who explode in popularity seemingly overnight do so because they are known for a single product or service.
When you start trying to pander to everyone with countless different offerings, you will end up appealing to no one.
Improve your customer retention
Cash flow is king when it comes to growing your business, and a lot of it should stem from repeat customers.
Trying to attract new customers is a costly and time-sapping process with no promise of success, whereas convincing existing buyers to make another purchase is far easier.
As they keep buying from you, it becomes ever more likely that they will do the same in the future, making it a more reliable source of income.
To ensure you increase your buyer retention, deliver customer service that goes above and beyond the ordinary, creating an experience that they will remember for a long time. You want to be the type of brand that customers recommend to their friends and family or believe reflects well on them.
You should also ensure that buying products repeatedly is worth their while – perhaps by offering deals or loyalty cards.
