One of the smartest investments you can make in the future of your business is to develop a diverse growth strategy. Companies with a detailed growth strategy tend to achieve success at a much faster rate than those taking a lackadaisical approach to increased sales. With failure rate for startups and small businesses higher than ever, it is imperative you stack the odds of business growth success in your favor. Many companies do not last past the five-year mark, making it essential for business builders to have a plan in place to ensure growth is achieved on an annual basis.
But how do you create a growth strategy that ensures your company succeeds when you don’t know where to start? One of the best ways is to create a long-term plan-of-action to encourage ongoing growth across multiple areas of your company. If you want help to learn how to develop a growth strategy that dominates the competition for your business, integrate the following 10 tips into your business building efforts.
Know your Retention Rate
1) Increase your retention rate if you want to grow your business this year. The more money you spend on acquiring new customers, the fewer funds you have to work on business growth elements like product development and talent acquisition. It is cheaper to keep an existing customer than it is to hunt for a new one. Focus on exceeding the expectations of your existing customers and you’ll reduce your churn rate while growing your company at the same time.
Understand your Market Penetration
2) Another way to improve your business’ growth strategy this year is to work on market penetration. It is not enough to skim the surface of a market sector in terms of building brand awareness. If you want to significantly increase your company’s growth efforts, diving deep across multiple sectors of an industry vertical is an excellent way to go. Build a strong reputation for your brand within a market to establish a reputation as the go-to source of information and expertise.
Align your Growth Strategies
3) Synchronise your growth strategies when you are attempting to build your company. Ensure each department of your company is pulling in the same direction and have the same ultimate goals in mind. Synchronised business growth strategies not only lead to faster business development, they can help your company grow a stronger, more resilient team at the same time. When every team member is working towards the same goals, there tends to be a greater sense of ‘us against the world’ and team camaraderie.
Develop an Action Plan
4) Business growth strategies that dominate the competition should include specific growth areas you want to work on as a company. It is not enough to tell your team you want to grow by x% each year. You must specify how you plan to achieve growth and which target areas you will be focusing on. Help your team to identify target growth areas, develop a plan of action for each of those areas, and determine how the results will be measured.
Measurement allows for Improvement and Growth
5) Results measurement is a critical component of an effective growth strategy. When teams know who is measuring results and how those results are going to be distributed to the team, there is a greater tendency for all team members to take ownership of their role in a company’s growth. Responsibility and accountability can have a profound impact on both employees and management when it comes to YoY (year-over-year) growth.
Take a Strategic Approach in Stages
6) When developing a business growth strategy, be sure to outline your strategy in stages. Team members are much more likely to be accepting of change when they can clearly see how each component of growth will be achieved and how each stage aligns with the next. It can be overwhelming for employees to be greeted with massive change or large business goals, but if they are able to see a business growth strategy outlined in smaller stages, chances are greater that they will buy in on the long-term vision.
Knowledge and Education Fuel Growth
7) Information acquisition is an essential component of an effective growth strategy. You can’t expect team members to achieve substantial success if you aren’t helping them increase their knowledge database. Invest in your team’s expertise and help them learn new skills to achieve the goals you have set out for your company. Not only are they more likely to achieve larger sales targets, their new expertise can be utilised in multiple facets of their employment with your company. Informed and educated employees are strong employees.
Think about your Basket of Eggs
8) Diversification is another core component of a stellar growth strategy. Business leaders who understand the benefits of diversifying everything from their marketing efforts to their talent acquisition have a greater chance of success. The proverbial ‘all your eggs in one basket’ strategy isn’t good for anyone, especially not companies wanting accelerated growth. Having said that, if you find a winning formula, go hard at this but take steps and be prepared for the rain to stop pouring someday. Look at your company’s overall growth plans to ensure diversification is integrated into multiple facets of your business’ strategies.
Qualified Leads Convert into Sales
9) For a growth strategy to work, lead generation quality needs to be analysed. You can generate a wide variety of sales leads, but if those leads aren’t pre-qualified, you might be wasting precious funds attempting to convert leads that will go nowhere. Understand the role lead quality plays in your business’ ability to grow or you could be on a path towards wasted business expenditures and less-than-stellar conversion rates.
Review your Position Regularly
10) If you want your team to achieve ongoing results, analyse your business’ situation on a frequent basis. Annual reviews and setting company goals are fine, but you could be missing opportunities if you don’t review your current situation on a more regular basis. Trends change really quickly now and opportunities arise a fall along with them. If you are not monitoring your company’s current situation and progress, you will miss out on acceleration opportunities your competitors will capitalise on.
Incorporate these 10 tips into your business’ growth strategy and you stand a much greater chance of out-performing your competition. By developing a multi-pronged growth strategy, not only do you increase your chances of success, you increase the rate at which you achieve your goals. At OKMG we help our clients to get their businesses growing. See our case study to learn more.