Every small business owner typically shares one thing in common with one another—the dream to expand into a much larger, much more lucrative operation. However, saying you want to expand and actually doing so present two widely differentiating challenges. Moreover, every business venture is unique and with that comes a unique set of challenges and pitfalls.
Still, there is a basic foundation for small business growth that seems to remain constant with most ventures. Lucky for you, I have included that information below:
Put Your Customers to Work for You
Oddly enough, your customers can be your biggest “employees,†so to speak. A lot of sales can easily be generated by the referrals of past customers, satisfied with your product or service. You can take it one step further by implementing an incentive program for your existing customers. Perhaps you could offer past and existing customers some sort of discount on a product or service for referring new customers to you. Pretty soon you may find that your product or service is so good that is practically sells itself.
Bring Something New to the Table
Most small businesses don’t expand on a whim. Typically, most promising new businesses will have some new and innovative product, concept, or service. It is widely understood that to be innovative, you need to offer up one or more new products to keep not only your competition at bay, but also attract new customers. If you look at massive corporations, you will find elaborate teams of Research & Development analysts devoted solely to the creation of new products. The lesson to take away here is that without innovation, a business—small or large—is sure to crumble.
The World is Your Market
They don’t call it “The Business World†for nothing. When it comes to expanding your small business, imagine the potential when you consider going global. Did you know that approximately 99% of small businesses in the U.S. are not exporting overseas? One key issue as to why this number is so large can be attributed to a communication gap. However, with audio conferencing services such as Polycom, communicating with new markets globally has grown exponentially more convenient. Expanding into new markets will mean you need to do some research on your end though. Different regions will mean different cultures, marketing techniques and so on. You want to do everything possible to be prepared for such.
Embrace Technology
We live in a world of technology. Advancements are being made each and every day. Still, so many small businesses are wasting a large amount of time manually performing tasks that could easily be automated. Software, hardware, machinery, cloud-computing and my other realms of technology are being embraced by more and more businesses in an effort to grow. However, it can safely be said that there are time-savers and time-wasters. You need to know which pieces of technology to invest in, and which technology will improve how well your business operates.
Everyone Knows Their Role
For some reason or another, as a business grows, the added responsibilities and jobs are performed by the same people. In other words, everyone is sharing each other’s jobs. In order to grow though, each employee (as well as upper management) needs to know their place. This is the key to optimal job performance and efficiency. For instance, if a CEO were to do the role of the CFO and the CIO, then there would be no time to focus on the ultimate future of the business.