Small Business Saturday Blog

7 essential growth tips that small businesses need to know

Thursday, August 22, 2019 at 09:27

Image credit: Pixabay

It’s one thing to start a business, but it’s another entirely to turn it into a major success. After all, the road to growth is riddled with potholes and challenges, fully prepared to arrest your development (or even send you hurrying back to square one) if you’re not careful. Because of this, if you’ve started taking your first steps down that road, you should stop to think.

What should you think about? For a start, how prepared you really are for the route you’re taking. If you’re feeling anything less than 90% confident (some doubts are unavoidable), then I strongly suggest you do some more research before continuing. To help you move in the right direction, here are 7 growth tips that every small business owner should follow:

Learn from comparable companies

You’re not running your business in a vacuum, and while it’s somewhat commendable to want to discover everything for yourself, it’s simply a bad way to operate when history is littered with incredible examples of everything from absolute success to miserable failure. By identifying some companies already active in the business world that are similar to yours (not direct competitors, but useful points of comparison), you can learn from their paths.

Keep loyal customers happy

It’s true that you might well outgrow your first set of customers, but you should hold onto them for as long as you can. Why? Because their loyalty and support are invaluable and will prove critical for convincing new customers that you’re truly worthy of their attention (referral schemes are very impactful, and an ecommerce growth tool like Girafi can help you implement them). Churn is a dangerous enemy indeed, and you need a solid foundation upon which to build. Even as you expand, then, you musn’t forget where you started.

Get your finances in order

Money isn’t everything, but not having enough of it is. Growth demands investment (not just personally, but also financially), and you can’t get where you want to go unless you figure out how to balance investment in your future with the needs of today. Above everything else, get your accounts sorted: Wave has free accounting software designed for small business, so you can try that, or just set up a spreadsheet and log everything (this will take longer, though).

Assemble a great team ASAP

You can start out as a solo entrepreneur. You can even create a business and run it yourself fairly successfully, particularly if you’re operating as a freelancer — but you can’t indefinitely run a rapidly-expanding business with no assistance. Sooner or later (probably sooner), you’ll find yourself exhausted and frustrated, having lost all energy for your project. To stop that from happening, you need to build a great team (the earlier, the better) to lighten your load.

Delegate anything you can

Speaking of not doing everything yourself, you need to learn how to delegate. This is something that plenty of business owners struggle with (even experienced ones). They’re so used to controlling everything that they don’t know how to stop themselves from micromanaging tasks or simply handling them directly. But if you’ve hired a great team, that team deserves your trust and respect — so trust them to do things correctly, then step back and focus on sales.

Document all your procedures

If you’re extremely fortunate, your team will stick around while you grow, but you’ll need to hire new people eventually. When that happens, you may need them to take over the handling of various existing tasks. Doing this efficiently is all about having your procedures fully documented — even something as simple as updating the company calendar could be given a walkthrough. (Tallyfly is a program designed to digitise manual processes, and you can try it for free.) Then, in the event that a vital employee does leave, they won’t take all their knowledge with them and leave you in the dark, because much of it will have been added to the documentation.

Don’t try to rush anything

Perhaps most importantly, don’t feel the need to grow at a rapid pace. You’re running a marathon, not a sprint, and you needn’t be thinking too much about where your business will be in a year. Instead, think about where you want it to be in two years, five years, or even ten years. Growing too quickly can lead to huge practical issues, such as being unable to fulfil orders, which can ultimately make your business smaller. Wait until you’ve clearly demonstrated that your business is ready to grow, then step on the accelerator.

It’s great to be proud of the business you’ve built, and to aspire to more, but don’t let that ambition send you in the wrong direction. If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Be smart, follow these growth tips, and you’ll minimise the risk.

Kayleigh Toyra is a content marketer and writer based in Bristol and Finland. Find out more at www.kayleightoyra.com or contact her at kayleigh@kayleightoyra.com or on 07954421522.