If you look through Facebook and LinkedIn, there is a list as long as your arm of people who can coach, mentor and support you with your company. After a Google search, you will find copious amounts of business growth strategies that claim they will spike your business growth. In our social media and internet-driven world, there are many possibilities and opportunities for you to grow, build and develop your business, so why are so many still asking the question, “How can I grow my business faster?”
The major limiting factor on the growth of a business is down to the quality of leadership. Most issues in a business can be solved by time or money. To get leads, for example, you can invest in LinkedIn training or spend time on your marketing strategy. However, money and time cannot solve a leadership problem. We believe that every business owner should be in charge of their own growth, which means they need to understand what their business growth should look like and lead it accordingly.
Having organic growth in a business is the dream. Imagine customers flowing through the door, the phone is buzzing with appointments and your inbox is pinging with event sign-ups. That organic growth is the result of a firm foundation strategy and effort.
Here are some key principles for growing a business faster.
Niche Down Your Market
As much as you think you can appeal to everyone, the truth is that this will not only be impossible, but you will actually hold your business back from growth. You cannot please everyone through your company’s services or products. To really get your business noticed you have to resonate with your prospects. You can’t do this when you are trying to appeal to every audience. It is a hard thing to hear because people worry that niching down will make them lose business. The truth is that niching will make you lose business, but you will only lose the wrong business. Crucially, you will be able to develop more business than you lose because you will gain a reputation in the key market you have focused on.
Niche businesses are a good example of this point because they charge more than generic businesses. Niche businesses can usually command a premium price because of their expertise in a very specific market or sector. Knowing and operating in your niche will help you develop your company.
Know the Numbers You Want to Hit
What are the numbers you want to hit in 12 months, 24 months and 36 months? You’ve probably answered this question in £s or $s, but we’re not talking about the accounts here. What about these numbers:
- How many customers will we have to reach our goal?
- How many enquiries will we need to handle?
- What is our clients average spend?
- Do we have enough awareness to generate the enquiries?
- What is our conversion rate from enquiry to sale?
Using finances as a mark of business growth is fine, but using this as a business growth strategy highlights a fundamental weakness. Businesses will underestimate the costs and work required to reach the goal. This does not occur when you look at business growth in terms of the list above. To say it in another way, to grow your business faster, you have to convert more sales, which you can do by improving your conversion rate and/or increasing the volume of enquiries. Once you know the numbers behind the numbers, you really know what it is going to take to hit the growth target.
Know What Your Growth Looks Like
In our desire for business growth, we can lose our heads. Without realising it, we can adopt a strategy of pursuing organic growth at any cost. We come out all guns blazing on business growth ideas without understanding the channels and where new business will actually come from. Basically, we try anything and everything. However, perfecting your process and methodology matters. Build a process that works for your business and your customers. Sometimes that will mean saying no. Adapting to customer demands may sound like a great thing to do, but if you move beyond your process and methodology it will cause you massive issues. To put it simply, taking on the wrong work or client can harm your business. This links back to the earlier point on niching down. If you don’t niche you will waste time trying to be everywhere to reach people. Find out where your customers are, how they respond to different sales and marketing messages. Once you know something works, focus on it. If your strategy fails, tweak it and see what happens. Don’t flit about, stick with platforms and mediums which are relevant to your customers. As you get more familiar with your platforms and what works for your audience, you can improve your efforts and grow your business.
The answer to growing a business faster, then, is often the opposite of what we might think. More customers might mean niching down, growing profit may mean fewer customers and understanding your business may mean getting outside help.
