Maintaining Momentum for Successful Growth
In order to maintain your momentum, your success and your business growth, you will need to adopt and consider a number of key components:
- Managing Leadership - As a leader, your role is to set the direction in which you want to drive the business. It is important to build a framework for people to operate within and allow them room to contribute and develop. Leading and managing is an art, to find out more about what it requires, see the Leadership and Management tips section.
- Financial Planning - To manage expansion and growth, you will need to plan for hiring new staff and buying or leasing equipment and stock. Handling debtors and creditors is an important element of this process. Bottom line? You must convert your purchases into sales and get the cash in before it runs out. Remember, even profitable businesses fail through lack of cash. Read our Financial Tips section. Many a business owner has had to deal with the frustrating situation of securing a big order that will ‘sort everything out’ once the cash is in the bank, but, until then not having the cash in the bank to order stock, pay staff or creditors. This is a common problem, so you need to plan finances effectively and know exactly what is coming in and going out of the business day-to-day.
- Resourcing Innovation and Growth - As an entrepreneur, it is essential that you surround yourself with people who share your goals and vision; people who can bring their expertise and skills to the table. People are the lifeblood of any business, so you must treat them fairly and look after them. An authentic business begets staff loyalty and a happy team begets high productivity. It is therefore important to retain these skilled resources, so good Human Resource practices and principles should be included within the business. See the tips for Managing your Human Resources.
- Creative Marketing - As you develop and grow your business from launch to year two, three and beyond, you will get to learn more and more about your customers needs, wants, preferences, complaints… So, based on your experience, you can refine your marketing strategy. You can base your new strategy on findings including, what customers buy the most of, what kind of customers are buying most, where are they coming from (which marketing strategies are working) and so on. The aim with any business growth programme is to continuously build your strongest markets and/or restructure your approach to target new growth market sectors. Check out the Tips for Marketing Your Business.
- Brand Reputation - Your brand develops with your business and your reputation. It is essential to maintain and draw on the strength of your brand to your own advantage. You may want to review your brand and ethos during the development of your business, in reaction to customer tastes. Your aim will always be to communicate your brand, your brand review and what you as a business stand for as effectively as possible o everyone involved in your business from staff and suppliers to customers and the general public. Check out tips for maintaining your Brand.
- Targeted Promotion - As you develop your brand and your business you will refine and tune into your target markets; you will define key advertising and communication channels to carefully select your media in a way to maximise your return on investment and get your name in front of the right people. Your brand and the impression of your brand will develop as a result. To plan a way of reinforcing your message in a targeted way, check out the tips on Managing the PR of a Growing Business.
- Quality Standards - You should have integrated responsible business practices into the development of the business, and now is the right time to develop your Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy. From the practices you have put in place, you can look at applying for Quality Accreditation Marks to recognise your commitment. To find out more, check out the Social and Environmental practices.
- Planned Expansion - Assessing the next steps to your business growth is a key factor, whether it’s organic growth, merger, licence arrangement, franchise agreement or maybe selling your business. You will need to think through your own career goals and prospects…Where do you want your company to go? What level of management do you desire? What are the options?
Striding Out can help you grow a business, by working alongside you with the Business Pioneer Coaching Programme.
