If you want your business to be successful, you’ll need it to grow. If you’re not growing your business, you risk losing out on market share, customers and revenue from rivals who are more competitive and keener to succeed.
There’s also the risk that if you don’t have a plan for how you want your business to grow, it won’t have a structure and will end up inefficient and overstretched. This could, paradoxically, lead to the collapse of your business. To avoid this risk, you need to ensure you’re growing your business consciously, with aims and a structure to support its burgeoning size.
Data Based Planning
One of the most important things you can do is make data a part of your planning and decision making. Partnering with the right market research company can get you data on your domestic market and international research. This means that when you’re making decisions about expanding your business, whether it’s hiring new staff, opening new branches or even expanding abroad, you can projections about the likely cost, and the demand that exists for your services. If it looks like you’re unlikely to recoup your investment, then that opportunity to grow could be a poor one.
The Value of Your Brand
Your brand is one of the most valuable assets as a business owner, and it’s one of the things that can be harmed by your growth if you don’t plan carefully. If you build a reputation as a responsible, reactive company that cares about its customers then part of your planning for the future needs to be to maintain that key element of your brand.
All too often, business’ sales departments dominate growth strategy, which can mean more clients, more products and more revenue in the short term, but a worse experience in the longer term. As people realise they aren’t getting the service your brand promises, your reputation takes a hit, and it can be costly to repair. The careful, conscious business owner, sets targets to ensure their customer service capabilities scale-out at the same pace as their reach. Keeping sales and CS in proportion mean customers keep getting the same good experience even as the scale of your business grows.
Brand Tracker surveys can keep you abreast of how customers see your business – which qualities people see as uniquely ‘yours’. This allows you to lean into those characteristics as you grow, keeping your brand distinctive and personal, and attractive to customers!