What’s your biggest goal as a small business owner?
You certainly have many goals you’d like to achieve, but your biggest desire is to grow your small business into a large corporation. If you run a niche ecommerce store, for example, you’re always thinking of growing it into an Amazon-like business.
Unfortunately, not many small businesses achieve this kind of growth. In fact, many die within a decade. And of those that survive, a good number stay small.
What can you do to achieve sustainable business growth? Is it an impossible task?
In the world of entrepreneurship, nothing is impossible. With the right information, you can push your business to growth. Here’s how to do it:
1. Start Out Without a Business Plan – and Stick to It
Hands up if you started your business with a business plan.
Hands up if you’re still following your business plan.
As you can see, the number of hands up has dropped! A mistake some business owners make is straying from their initial business plan once the business starts operating. Sure, sometimes it’s necessary to pivot or switch your business model, but if you don’t start out with a business plan and stick to it, you increase your chances of failure.
A business plan is like a blueprint. It outlines your business growth strategy.
The quality of your business plan also matters. If you’ve never drawn a business plan before, it helps to hire a professional to do it. A detailed plan enhances your chances of running a successful business.
2. Offer a Great Product or Service
At the core of your business is the product or service that you sell to customers.
How great is it?
In the market, there are all kinds of products and services. The customer is at liberty to choose what they want, but if you want them to choose you over your competitors, your product or service should be better than the rest.
The key to offering a great product is to do sufficient research during development. This ensures you’ll come up with a product that solves a real market problem. You should then focus on making it better and cheaper than what’s already on offer.
A great product sells itself. This means you won’t spend as much money on marketing as you’d have spent with an inferior product.
Deliver on what your promise. If you say your product does this or that, ensure it does that. Nothing disappoints a customer like seeing a great ad only to purchase the product and find out that it doesn’t work as advertised. It’s also a sure way to lose the customer.
3. Complement Your Great Offering with Excellent Customer Service
A great product sells, sure, but on its own, it can only sell so much.
As a business owner, you shouldn’t rest easy just because customers love your product. If you don’t put any effort into providing excellent customer service or support, they can abandon your business, no matter how perfect your product serves them.
What’s more, your competitors are busy at work making their product better than yours, so when a customer leaves you and falls for a competitor, you may never get them back.
There’s a lot that goes into providing excellent customer service. Hire qualified service reps and train them regularly to update their skills. Ensure customers have multiple ways to contact your business, and when they reach out, don’t keep them waiting forever for a response.
4. Know Your Customer
Speaking of customer service, how well do you know your customer?
It’s hardly possible to offer the best customer service if you don’t what your customer wants. If you don’t have a detailed profile of your typical customer, you probably aren’t offering them the best service.
Knowing your customer runs beyond knowing where they live or how much they spend on your products every month. You need to know the average age range of your ideal customer, their income, marital status, political views, hobbies, and more.
With acute knowledge of your customer, you’re in a better position to tailor your services to their needs. You’ll also avoid blunders that can annoy your customers.
For example, if most of your customers are conservatives when it comes to politics and you want to cast your business as liberal, you risk alleviating your customer base. It’s best to stay politically neutral but if you have to pick a side, then it needs to be the side your customers are in.
5. Digitize Your Business
Can you imagine 46 percent of businesses in the U.S. and 59 percent in Canada don’t have a website? In the digital age!
Digitizing your business isn’t just about survival. It’s a key step to take when you want to grow a business. The right technology will help you automate your operations and can lower your operating costs significantly.
And, once you’ve implemented IT hardware and software, outsource your IT support needs to an expert like Ctechgroup.ca. Outsourcing is more cost-effective than hiring in-house IT support specialists.
You Can Achieve Business Growth
Most small businesses don’t achieve the kind of business growth their founders envision. They’ll hit a growth peak and then fall off. Your business needn’t follow the same path.
It’s possible to achieve massive business growth and transform your small company into a large-scale enterprise. Follow our tips on how to grow a business and you’ll stand a strong chance.
We’ve got more business tips and insights on our blog, so stay tuned!
