Growing A Successful Business
You own a business and you are finding it difficult to manage, or you are thinking of starting a small/large business but suffer the prowess and ability of a business management?Setting Up A Business Matters, But Managing It Matters Most.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Starting a business requires analytical thinking, determined organization, and detailed record-keeping.
- It’s important to be aware of your competition and either appropriate or improve upon their successful tactics.
- You’ll almost certainly end up working harder for yourself than you would for someone else, so prepare to make sacrifices in your personal life when establishing your business.
- Providing good service to your customers is crucial to gaining their loyalty and retaining their business.
- Make sure not only that the business is ready for launch, but you are as well.
To succeed in business today, you need to be flexible and have good planning and organizational skills. Many people start a business thinking that they’ll turn on their computers or open their doors and start making money, only to find that making money in a business is much more difficult than they thought.
Here are some few spikes to help you grow a dream business.
1. Get Organized
To achieve business success you need to be organized. It will help
you complete tasks and stay on top of things to be done. A good way to be
organized is to create a to-do list each day. As you complete each item, check
it off your list. This will ensure that you’re not forgetting anything and
completing all the tasks that are essential to the survival of your business.
Many software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools exist to increase organization. Tools like Slack, Asana, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and other newer additions. That being said, a simple Excel spreadsheet will meet many of a business's organization requirements.
2. Keep Detailed Records
All successful businesses keep detailed records. By doing so, you’ll
know where the business stands financially and what potential challenges you
could be facing. Just knowing this gives you time to create strategies to
overcome those challenges.
Most businesses are choosing to keep two sets of records: one
physical and one in the cloud. By having records that are
constantly uploaded and backed up, a business no longer has to worry about
losing their data. The physical record exists as a backup but more often than
not, it is used to ensure that the other information is correct.
3. Analyze Your Competition
Competition breeds the best results. To be successful, you can’t
be afraid to study and learn from your competitors. After all, they may be doing
something right that you can implement in your business to make more money.
How you analyze competition will vary between sectors. If you're a
restaurant owner, you may simply be able to dine at your competition's
restaurants, ask other customers what they think, and gain information that
way. However, you could be a company with much more limited access to your
competitors, such as a chemicals company. In that case, you would work with a
business professional and accountant to go over not just what the business
presents to the world, but any financial information you may be able to get on
the company as well.
4. Understand the Risks and Rewards
The key to being successful is taking calculated risks to help your business grow. A good question to ask is “What’s the downside?” If you can answer this question, then you know what the worst-case scenario is. This knowledge will allow you to take the kinds of calculated risks that can generate tremendous rewards.
Understanding risks and rewards includes being smart about the timing of starting your business. For example, did the severe economic dislocation of 2020 provide you with an opportunity (say, manufacturing and selling face masks) or an impediment (opening a new restaurant during a time of social distancing and limited seating allowed)?
5. Be Creative
Always be looking for ways to improve your business and make it
stand out from the competition. Recognize that you don’t know everything and be
open to new ideas and different approaches to your business.
There are many outlets that may lead to additional revenues. Take
Amazon for example. The company started out as a bookseller and grew into an
eCommerce giant. Not a lot of people expected that one of the major ways that
Amazon makes its money is through its Web Services division. The division did
so well that when Jeff Bezos stepped down as CEO, the head of Amazon Web
Services was named the new CEO.
6. Stay Focused
The old saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day” applies here.
Just because you open a business doesn’t mean you’re going to immediately start
making money. It takes time to let people know who you are, so stay focused on
achieving your short-term goals.
Many small business owners don't even see a profit for a few years
while they use their revenues to recoup investment costs. This is called being
"in the red." When you are profitable and
make more than you need to spend to cover debts and payroll, this is called
being "in the black."
That being said, if the business is not turning a profit after a
substantial period of time, it's worth looking into if there are issues with
the product or service, if the market still exists, and other possible issues
that might slow or halt a business's growth.
7. Prepare to Make Sacrifices
The lead-up to starting a business is hard work, but after
you open your doors, your work has just begun. In many cases, you have to put
in more time than you would if you were working for someone else, which may
mean spending less time with family and friends to be successful.
The adage that there are no weekends and no vacations for business
owners might ring true for those who are committed to making their business
work. There is nothing wrong with full-time employment, and some business
owners underestimate the true cost of the sacrifices that are required to start
and maintain a profitable business.
8. Provide Great Service
There are many successful businesses that forget that providing
great customer service is important. If you provide better service for your
customers, they’ll be more inclined to come to you the next time they need
something instead of going to your competition.
In today's hyper-competitive business environment, often the
differentiating factor being successful and unsuccessful businesses is the
level of service that the business provides. This is where the saying
"undersell and overdeliver" comes in use, and savvy business owners
would be wise to follow it.
9. Be Consistent
Consistency is a key component to making money in business. You
have to keep doing what is necessary to be successful day in and day out.
This will create long-term positive habits that will help you make money in the
long run.
What Is the Fastest Way for a Business to Grow?
Businesses
will grow at their own rates, and many times this is out of the control of the
business owner or workers. However, there are some aspects to running lean that
may help a business grow quickly, such as focusing on a small product line,
scaling up instead of scaling down, and providing some sort of obvious edge
over your competitors.
How Do You Increase Sales?
Increasing
sales can come from a few different places. You can increase advertising
expenditures where it has a proven effect, offer referrals from existing
clients, build a direct-to-consumer email
list, and others. You can also expand a product line, but if it underperforms,
it will negatively affect your bottom line.
What Makes a Startup Successful?
Business success is a difficult concept to quantify but if it means generating returns for stakeholders, startups can be an excellent way to deliver returns. The best startups have a good product or service that is scalable. The startup can pivot quickly, understand the market and its financial situation, and is ready to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves.
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