Taking one’s business to the next level is a desire most business owners and dealers want to achieve at one point in their business.
Nevertheless, growing one’s business is not limited to the volume of sales, size of the business and profitability.
Sometimes it can be as simple as ensuring that the business maintains its profitability rate and doesn’t fall off in tough times.
As soon as your business is established and sales or profit-making allows you to break even, you might want to start thinking about how to go about growing the business.
However, many business owners are so worried about how to grow their businesses that they end up not doing it or may try growing their businesses without doing it right. This can sometimes lead to the business collapsing.
It’s never been easy owning and running a small business. Most especially now, in the UK, with rising costs of living and inflations.
Still, many people want to start a business and those who have started hope to grow the business further.
In this article, we will be providing you with tips on how to achieve small business and still grow your business.
HERE ARE TIPS ON HOW TO GROW YOUR SMALL AND MEDIUM BUSINESS IN THE UK.
- Work with a Business Mentor.
Business mentors are important, as they can provide you with support, advice and guide you through the infancy period of the business.
A good business mentor will share their experience, skills, and even contacts with you.
So you can develop your own business ideas, and with the assistance of a good mentor you can get a solid head start in your business.
Keeping in contact with your business mentor is key. You can set up meetings, telephone calls, and exchange emails, any method that is convenient for you and the mentor.
Furthermore, getting yourself a business mentor is not as difficult these days as many successful business owners are willing to take on the taste of being a mentor to new starters.
You can get top-class mentors who will be willing to brainstorm with you and are available to you when you need them at certain costs, or you could enjoy free mentorship with mentors primed towards assisting you.
It would be best to get a mentor who has experience, and possess knowledge relevant to your business.
Regardless, you shouldn’t worry too much about it at the beginning, if your first business mentor isn’t from your business field.
- Find Ways to Increase Sales and Productivity.
The sales increase is always one of the major aims and the first point business owners use to determine how their business is performing. Many business owners do not even consider productivity most time, but let’s talk about increasing sales first.
Increasing your sales can be done through two means; by increasing sales through getting your existing customers to buy more or by targeting new customers -who you might be able to drum up interest in your product or services within them.
Here are some bullet points on how to sell to your existing customers;
- Persuade your one-time customers to become frequent and repeat customers.
- Reach out to customers who used to patronize your goods and services, and find ways to win them back to your side.
- Use and embrace tactics to make your customers buy more products and engage your services more.
Here are some bullet points on how to attract new customers to your business, so you can improve sales;
- Tell your customers and patrons to help “tell a friend” about your business. Customer recommendations to friends, family, and colleagues can help promote your business faster in your immediate environment better than paid ads.
- You can take advantage of the local media in your region to help promote and push your business. Reaching many more people than word of mouth too.
- Using other forms of online and digital marketing to market your business
- Engage potential customers who don’t patronize your business at the moment. Find out why and what it would take for them to switch to your business.
Now productivity should be deemed more important than working long hours. Don’t get this wrong. Working hard is a good trait and is a positive for your business in its early stages.
However, you will easily burn out physically and mentally if you spend all your time working hard at your business when you can easily try other means and be more productive.
Instead of having a two paged bucket list of things to do, you can divide your activities and time them to a schedule that will increase your productivity and not leave you burned out.
Time allocation will also help you find time for brainstorming and engaging in your hobbies or personal activities.
Focusing on productivity will help you focus on building your business for the long term, and still find time for yourself.
- Improve your Existing Products and Services, or Introduce New Products and Services.
Improving your products and services is another area you can use to build on to grow your business.
You can make use of questionnaires, take surveys, talk to customers, ask questions on;
- What are they buying from you and what is it that they value the most about your product or service.
- Why they are patronizing you and not your immediate business rivals.
- What you can do to help better the products and services you offer to do.
- What would encourage them to buy more
You can then review and improve your products on the information gathered, but you might not be able to implement all the demands and suggestions of your customers.
Nevertheless, ensure that any change made will increase your sales and profitability. You could also use prototype products and services to see how customers react to them, before implementing the changes permanently.
A similar approach should be taken when developing new products or services. Introducing new products and services should be treated with the same caution one would use when starting a new business.
Confirming there is a market for what you want to introduce, is the demand for what you plan to introduce sizable enough for you to make a profit?
You can follow this process when introducing a new product or service to your business;
- Talking with existing customers and people you consider potential customers, find out about their needs or build on their general suggestions.
- If you can, make a prototype product based on their needs and suggestions. Quickly and as low cost as possible without compromising on the target quality. Then test it in the market.
- Collect feedback from the customers. Determine if the product will be profitable should you go into full-scale production, if yes? You should determine if there should be any addition you might need to make to the product, make it, and get ready to take your product to the market.
- Survey the market and the key performers, build your market strategy on this information, then go out to the public market to implement your strategy.
- Get Extra Funding for your Business and take any Help you Find.
We were always going to come to this. Funding is key to growing your business. Whether it’s improving sales or introducing new products you need funds to do so.
There are various ways you can get more funding for your business;
- You can reinvest the profits you made back into your business.
- Take out loans from friends, family, and financing agencies. Depending on your needs. Remember that loans are different from investments.
- Taking advantage of government grants and schemes to support small businesses.
When getting help with your business, you should take help whenever it is offered. Doesn’t matter if it is Government schemes, training and mentoring programs or just connecting with fellow business owners.
Take it and use it as efficiently as possible, even if it’s a family member or a friend looking to cover a shift in your business.
This will not only save you energy and funds but will also let you recover and return with a brighter mindset to help your business grow and move ahead.
