Accelerating Small Business Growth: 5 Proven Methods

One of the concerns that people come to us with most frequently is knowing how and when to grow sustainably. They’re doing well already, but how do they keep improving without falling apart. This article should start to answer some of those questions.  

1. Don’t Just Satisfy Your Customers, Fulfill Them

People are emotional creatures.  As much as we like to believe that we make decisions solely on rational facts, weighing the pros and cons, in reality… we don’t.  We are driven by our emotions.  It’s important to understand the emotional needs and emotional state of your customers. Emotionally satisfied customer are repeat business, which is one of key was to accelerate small business growth.

2. Key Questions to ask

What’s driving them to come to you? Are they stressed? Worried about something? Hoping for a better outcome?  Whatever it is, you want to make sure that your product or service leaves them in a better emotional state than when they came in.  If you do that consistently, you’ll have a customer for life.

3. Have the right team in place

Accelerating small business growth can’t happen if you don’t have people there to handle the demand. Making hiring decisions is one of the most challenging, but the most important decision a small business can make. Finding the right talent is key to expanding and helping your business in all respects. It’s important to be honest with yourself about where your gaps lie.  Small business owners are used to wearing multiple hats and are often afraid of the expense of hiring new people.  However, having the wrong people in the wrong place can severely impact growth.

4. Know what drives your demand and can accelerate your small business growth

Knowing your business model is key, and it is often overlooked by small business owners. It’s important to know what factors drive your sales funnel so that you can proactively plan for the demand, and it helps to know what to market and how.  Being able to predict the demand will help you ensure that you have the right team in place to handle it, and you are investing wisely to accelerate your small business growth

5. Reduce inefficiency

It is worth repeating. Knowing your business model is key.  It’s not just important to know how you drive sales, but also the cost it takes to service it.  If an increasing demand is creating an imbalance in costs, accelerating small business growth can lead to decreasing profits.

Invest wisely to accelerate small business growth

This last point is key to ensure that you are successful in #2-4.  Investing wisely in people, business processes, and business systems can ensure that you have the right people in the right roles at the right time.  It can also ensure that you are efficiently driving demand so that accelerating small business growth leads to accelerating profits.

More information can be found on Small Business Trends. Their post focuses more on online marketing, but it does provide some additional useful information. But if you are looking at how to expand in all markets and all aspects, turn to us. We know what we’re doing, and we know how to help.