Business growth is crucial to the long-term success and survival of any venture. It also offers you greater sustainability and resilience in the market, lower costs due to economies of scale, stronger market dominance, greater buying and bargaining power, the ability to mitigate commercial risks through diversification, etc. It is good for any business for many different reasons. For example, it may allow you to:
- innovate and take advantage of new opportunities;
- expand your business to new markets or create new products or services;
- attract more customers and hire more staff;
- increase sales and acquire your competitors
etc.
Growing your business is not an easy job and requires that you invest your time and resources in diverse strategies. Yes, many entrepreneurs will find a way to grow their business slowly, but this is the age of modern technologies and harshly demanding markets. For that reason, your business growth needs to be explosive. Here are 10 effective ways to accelerate business growth:
1. Build a sales funnel
Sales are the first and the most efficient way to grow your business – the more you sell the more revenue you generate and grow. Sales funnels can help you automate your business, scale quickly and easily, and save time and money. You just need to ensure to conceptualize each funnel carefully, test different methods, and start tackling the market via numerous opportunities. Whether it’s a free-plus-shipping offer or an exclusive blitz sale offering, just make sure to innovate on this front always and deliver value to your customers in diverse ways. If you are a business whose growth is dependent on classic sales, you can also use tools created by online service providers such as HubSpot to automate your selling process and reach out to more customers on a daily or weekly basis. Our formula for growing your revenue: simplify your niche offering + sell via different funnels + bill fast to avoid cash flow problems = growth.
2. Personalize the branding of your products
Personalizing the branding of your products will help you differentiate yourself on the market and show to customers that you care about their opinion and trending market developments. Companies often promote and distribute their products or services in a “one-message-fits-all” manner and lose many sales because audiences are always changing their purchasing habits and demanding new things from the industry. By personalizing your products based on the information that you can collect about your industry, customers and hot topics on the market, people will subconsciously feel the need to be associated with your offering and often promote their satisfaction via social media platforms.
3. Have better control of your cash flow
This advice can sound too generic to some entrepreneurs, but without a proper cash flow balance, your efforts to grow and expand your company will suffer in ways that you probably can’t imagine. As explained by the Marketing Logic team, “The key to rapid growth has nothing to do with running on razor-thin cash flow margins while investing everything in marketing and expansion. Instead, it’s all about the balance between today’s needs and tomorrow’s expectations.” The majority of business owners ignore their cash flow or hire an accountant that works on 10 accounts simultaneously to control their income. Sure, your taxes will be filled properly, but you might be making one of the biggest mistakes of your life. Control your cash flow, have insight into your needs and opportunities, and make your plans based on available resources – create that type of balance and your business will significantly improve and grow.
4. Focus on effective hiring
The strength of your business is dependent on the strength of your team members. Having quality employees will help your company run, grow and innovate – a necessity in the modern market where companies are competing with technological innovation and improvement of their services. You need to take time preparing interview questions, analyzing candidates, their social skills and ambitions, learning more about their past problems and solutions, etc. The truth is that each person being hired brings something unique to the business hence it is important to seek out those with the most efficient skills and qualities. You need to find people that are not only able to handle a specific task but people that will complete your existing output and make your team better.
5. Use outstaffing to accelerate your development
Outstaffing is most likely the most effective hiring method for businesses that are looking to grow their team and company culture, lower their operating and other costs, and speed up their development and business growth. Furthermore, it is cheaper and easier than classic hiring (which is time-consuming, stressful and expensive). It is ideal for companies that want to bring more people on board, need someone to build their products or improve their existing infrastructure, or just want to build a better company culture. Unlike outsourcing and other hiring methods, you can browse the pool of international talent that is more affordable, your new team members will become an extension of your existing team giving you complete management control, and you will spend less time and money growing your team. Some of our clients at SHORE teams saw a 5x boost in their operations after utilizing outstaffing and grew their revenue by 30%. If you are looking to explore outstaffing opportunities and learn more about it, make sure to send us a message at info@shoreteams.com or schedule a call here.
6. Create a customer loyalty program
Loyalty programs are a great way to increase sales and establish a better relationship with your customers. It costs up to three times more money to acquire new customers and capture their attention than it does to sell something to an existing customer and maintain their interest. In some cases, it can cost a business 10 times more money to acquire new customers. Regardless of the way you look at it, acquiring new customers is expensive. Therefore, in order to retain your existing customer base and have them promote your values to new people for free, you should build a customer loyalty program. By creating a clear incentive for customers to spend more money with you, you will significantly accelerate your sales and raise awareness about your offering. In the long run, this means more revenue, less marketing costs, and a better understanding of your target market.
7. Use free knowledge platforms to establish credibility
There are many free knowledge-based platforms such as Quora, a question-and-answer website where questions are asked, answered, and edited by Internet users, either factually, or in the form of opinions. These platforms are used or followed by numerous users across the globe – from students to industry professionals. What most people do not understand is that these platforms can also be used by company founders to establish trust and credibility online and drive traffic to their business. Select the topics that resonate with your values and share your knowledge with others. This will result in the following and support and help you efficiently position your business in the market. The goal is to become an opinion leader. You can also create a webinar which is a great way to promote any product or service as they provide an automated selling tool for taking any product or service to market, capturing the attention of wide audiences and connecting with new markets.
8. Increase your business visibility
You need to constantly work on increasing your business visibility, especially online. What is the point of building valuable products or services if customers cannot discover them? For example, you can launch your mobile app, learn about basic SEO (search engine optimization) techniques that will help you establish some visibility on search engines, launch your presence on social media, claim your business on Google, launch a newsletter, etc. Always produce good content, follow current market trends and leverage interesting news to promote your own causes on social media platforms such as Twitter. Another great tip is to experiment with different management, marketing, sales, and other tools all the time. You can also follow websites promoting new products such as Product Hunt and test different platforms or applications that might help you take your business to the next level (or use them to promote your own products).
9. Form strategic partnerships
Strategic partnerships can help you accelerate your development, enter new markets, and promote your products. This is why we often suggest outstaffing to our clients – it helps you form development partnerships that can accelerate your development, lower your costs and save your time. Consequently, it will accelerate your business growth. Partnerships, in general, can transform your business. You should be looking out for companies that are complementary to your own, contact them and discuss different opportunities for working together. These arrangements can include a mutual promotion, distribution of products of services, integration of services with a goal of serving a new group of customers, licensing deals, etc. And remember, it is never too early or too late to start a conversation or request some advice.
10. Reward your team when they meet or exceed expectations
Your team will determine the quality of your progress. Behind every business or a major breakthrough, there is a group of talented and passionate people that worked hard and turned their vision into operating reality. You need to create the right working and rewarding environment for your team members and encourage them to be creative and take calculated risks. Some of them will pan out and the others won’t, but a 10 percent bonus is much cheaper than a 30 percent increase in operating and other costs. If you create an incentive for your employees, they will feel appreciated and as a result become more productive and detail-oriented, their motives for the company’s success will skyrocket, and you will have to handle fewer problems in the long-run. This might not appear important to some people but it can completely change your business and boost your growth – you are nothing without your team members and customers so treat them like kings.
Building a good and disciplined character in the company and establishing a thriving culture for each member of the team is the ultimate key to success. The only way to get there is by trying new things, learning and failing all the time. SHORE teams is working with a large number of companies and partners, helping them identify ideal near-shore and off-shore partners and build a flourishing culture within their company. Through these partnerships, our clients can achieve their development goals and accelerate their corporate progression. As a result, we understand the process behind business growth and the importance of working culture.
Regardless of the size of your business, the same principles apply to any company or the general ambitions in life – if you want to achieve something, you need to fail, get back up, make some changes and stay disciplined. The learning process is invaluable. As Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy – an Indian IT industrialist and the co-founder of Infosys – stated, “When you are in business for a long time, you go through good times and bad times. When you undergo bad times, you learn to control costs, satisfy customers better, satisfy employees better and become more transparent. Therefore, you build character in the company.” Focus on your customers, respect your team and watch your business grow.
