Steps to Building a Great Team

To grow your business, you will need to recruit a team of people that are experienced and talented in a range of different skills. Your team may consist of a business partner, management board, freelancers, consultants, employees, volunteers etc. It's essential to plan this carefully to get the right mix and processes right, as otherwise it could seriously hamper the growth of your company.

If you are building a team for your business, work through the following checklist to plan your strategy:-

Working with a Business Partner

• Have you defined the job role and responsibilities of yourself and your business partner?
• Have you decided on the time and investment to be committed and the expected performance targets to be achieved by yourself and your business partner?
• What processes have you put in place to manage accountability and the relationship between the business partners?

There are many ways in which a business can grow their commercial revenue through the development of new income streams.

To grow a business, the founder(s) have to balance building and developing a team, with developing new and existing income streams of the business. This can be a struggle, particularly if the founder is very entrepreneurial and likes to focus on developing new ideas before building the foundations of their first ideas, to enable them to flourish.

At the point of a business growing beyond it's founder(s), it is critical to develop a clear vision for existing and new revenue streams. Once the strategy is agreed it must be communicated to all members of the team with delegated responsibilities. This ensures everyone in the business is moving in the same direction and the future growth of the business is not restricted to the energy and initiative of just one person.

This will enable the small business and founder to maintain it's entrepreneurial spirit within a structured framework that will ensure the future success of the business.

Ways to Increase Your Revenue

A number of ways to increase your revenue are discussed below...

Customer development

Customer development should always be the first consideration when looking at growth opportunities. It has always been said that it costs ten times more to acquire a customer than to retain one! This is a simplistic view but it never ceases to amaze me how many business owners focus time and energy (and therefore money) on sales to new customers, forgetting the potential value that is available to them through existing customers.

There is a recipe for achieving business success, which you need to know.

The entrepreneur is a key ingredient, but your role needs to be mixed and complemented with other ingredients to achieve the right results.

Research undertaken by Cranfield School of Management gives us an insight into creating the right recipe for success....

The key to successful entrepreneurial growth is to be able to position yourself so you can work ‘on' the development of the business, as opposed to ‘in' the business dealing with day to day operations and clients.

When you start out you tend to work ‘in' the business as you need to refine the daily operations and manage customers to ensure you have a clear method of working in place for others to follow. However, it's important that you continue to work ‘on' the business throughout this period and start to increase your focus on it as time progresses.

It's important to keep the vision of what you want to achieve. If you don't spend time assessing the factors detailed below, you are at risk of losing your way and failing.

When you work ‘on' the business you need to think about the following factors:-

Focus on Growing your Business

The skills and behaviours required to grow a business are different to those required for a successful launch. We all know that the success rate of new businesses is very low and if you are a small business owner you should congratulate yourself on getting to where you are today.