Most business owners go into business with the expectation of overall success, profitability, steady growth, and a big company. However, it takes hard work to attain such lofty goals. Yet, regardless of the work put into it, only a few businesses survive.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), shows that approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more. – Investopedia
Basically, there are about 5 stages every business evolves through–
- Existence
- Survival
- Success
- Take-off
- Resource Maturity
It is common to see that most businesses spend their first few years focused on survival. However, prioritizing your business’s growth is one of the best ways to increase the chances that your company will move past the survival stage, evolve through the highlighted stages to maturity, and contribute to your economic well-being and a stable financial future.
With these staggering statistics, how can business owners ensure that they do not spend so much time focusing on survival to the point that they end up being another statistic of failed businesses?
What can you do to move your beloved business beyond survival? What can you do to transform it into the income-generating machine that you envision?
Like any machine, different parts must come together in harmony to make your business function effectively as you envision.
Here are seven growth strategies that you can try; they have worked for many entrepreneurs including myself.
Contents
1. Have A Clearly Defined Business Purpose
The simpler, the better – One primary reason most small businesses find it hard to attain growth is that they do not have a clearly defined business objective. Therefore, the employees of most small businesses find it hard to define what their employers are truly into; only a handful might be able to successfully describe their business offerings in clear terms.
I’ve seen companies that most of their prospective customers do not understand what they sell or the services they render. I know this because it is one regular answer that I get when I run surveys to know why my clients are not retaining enough of their customers.
So, the clearer you make your mission statement and marketing messages, the easier it would be for your clients to know how best your product or services fit into their needs and will solve their pain points. Customers will not buy unless they are clear that you can meet their demands.
2. Choose the Right Growth Strategy for Your Business
Most growth strategies in business revolve around activities related to – market penetration, market expansion, product expansion, diversification, and acquisition.
A business leader must understand the various strategies available; their unique features, and when/how to adopt the most relevant strategy based on the scenario at hand. Your business growth is directly tied to your ability to identify and effectively utilize the right strategies to help your business grow.
3. Understand Your Customers
Profitable companies know their customers better than they know themselves. They sell the value, impact, and results their customers want to buy.
The very experienced entrepreneurs know that entrepreneurship is a marathon, you fail a lot of times. Yes, there would be seasons when you might be in abundance, but many more seasons when the only thing that would see you through would be your love for what you do – the solutions you provide to your clients’ problems; seeing the smiles on their faces.
So, ensure that you understand your customer, understand what they need, and ensure that you have the resources to deliver above and beyond what they require.
4. Offer great customer service
You need a ton of loyal paying customers to achieve actual business growth, and one sure way to get such loyal paying customers is to provide your customers with excellent service consistently.
Excellent customer service creates loyal customers who often are willing to refer your business to friends, family, and colleagues. Providing such type of excellent customer service begins with genuine love to solve your customers’ pain points. However, you also have to think beyond selling your products or services.
The customer is at the heart of your business growth. In other words, you must ensure that everything you do is focused on making your customers happy.
Your ability to provide excellent customer service consistently involves carefully designing a whole customer experience covering the entire customer journey from their first contact with your service to after-sales support services. And achieving such a lofty feat takes knowing your customers.
5. Recapture Existing Customers
Acquiring new customers isn’t always the best, and certainly not the only way to grow your business. Oftentimes, your existing customers are your best bet for increasing your sales.
Furthermore, several studies suggest that asides from ensuring that a business has some level of consistent inflow, improving your customer retention rate has a direct correlation with improving the value of your company.
6. look for new opportunities
As a business, especially when you are still a small business, you must find ways to constantly seek new business opportunities to ensure sustained business growth and profitability.
Now more than ever, we need to experiment with new ideas to attract new businesses. If you can find other services to offer, set aside some time to brainstorm what those services would look like.
i. Ask for Referrals
One sure way to grow your business is by constantly attracting new paying customers and there is no better way to attract more customers than to find ways to get your existing clients to bring them in.
Customers who have experienced what it’s like to be your customers would find it easier functioning as your brand ambassadors to people in their social circles who incidentally are likely to fit into your target market.
However, do not assume that your loyal customers would naturally send referrals your way unsolicited, you must actively ask them for referrals and if they have been treated fairly as customers, they would willingly grant your request.
ii. Extend Your Market Reach
There are several ways of growing your small business, and one such approach is by Extending Your Market Reach and getting your product or service more available to your existing and a new set of prospective customers.
When it comes to extending market reach you must work around the following:
- Open new store locations – Physical or virtual
- Promote your products in ways to encourage new uses for your products and services
- Improve on your marketing efforts
- Target new demographics
7. Build Required Structure
One way to ensure that your customers enjoy a quality user experience is to build structures that will help them enjoy quality user experience through your service delivery processes. One major area that is usually overlooked by most service companies is after-sales support.
Create a customer journey map and take a walk in their shoes, building relevant structures at every level to ensure that your customers have the best journey possible.
Every good salesman knows that one sure way to improve your customer lifetime value is by making the customer happy – you should endeavour to be the best in your market.
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Quick Summary
Prefer the short version? Here is a concise recap of the key ideas in this article.
Offer great customer service You need a ton of loyal paying customers to achieve actual business growth, and one sure way to get such loyal paying customers is to provide your customers with excellent service consistently. 6. look for new opportunities As a business, especially when you are still a small business, you must find ways to constantly seek new business opportunities to ensure sustained business growth and profitability. Ask for Referrals One sure way to grow your business is by constantly attracting new paying customers and there is no better way to attract more customers than to find ways.
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