Despite the traumatic effects of covid-19, the number of businesses in the UK continues to grow. From 2000 to 2020, we saw a 61% surge in the number of UK businesses. This is an excellent indicator for small to medium-sized companies looking to expand their operations.
If you want to know how to grow your business, we’ve put together some key considerations that you can use to make your growth successful.
The ONS recorded that some industries flourished during the pandemic, and many more have made a remarkable recovery. However, the evidence suggests that some businesses were better equipped than others to handle these disruptions. As such, adaptability and planning become critical factors in aiding your company to effectively manage growth.
Let’s examine some of these strategies.
Plan for Growth
Many businesses think about growth in terms of sales and revenue. However, it is also critical to consider how you will maintain your profitability over time. Unfortunately, according to research, many small businesses fail to understand the expertise and tools needed to sustain their growth.
The research suggests that businesses can use Maslow’s pyramid to create a clear structure for their growth and maintain their profitability.
Maslow’s Pyramid – for Businesses
Physical Needs – Survival Focus
This concerns how we adapt to everyday crises. Often, management employs reactionary tactics to deal with problems as they emerge. However, having systems in place, whether budgetary, policy-orientated or customer-facing, can provide better measures to help us survive difficult times.
Safety Needs – Routine Focus
This is about monitoring and benchmarking guidelines that a business has in place to examine its performance. Companies need to understand their baseline metrics to help keep their business objectives on track. While obvious things like sales might be a key metric to consider, they should also be aware of traffic, conversion, and marketing KPIs to see how they are performing against their competitors. This can help highlight where a business lacks certain elements and what needs to be changed to compete within its given market.
Social Needs – Improvement Focus
When a business understands how well they are doing, it can look to hone in on areas that need improvement. This is about creating targeted strategies to grow business activities. When we develop a new area, whether creating more customers, new products or systems, we want to know how they perform and what can be revised to maintain profitability.
Esteem Needs – Competitive Focus
The next step is about how we can gain an edge over competitors. This might be through improving customer service, logistics or day-to-day operations. Next, it can streamline the procedures we already have in place to advance our growth. Finally, it is worth looking at what software or hardware might be invested in to make these areas run smoothly.
Actualization – Leader Focus
The last step is how the business positions itself on the broader industry or community. For a business to reach its potential, it needs to become a leader and a source of support to others. This can establish its authority. Moreover, it is a public way to announce its motivations and drives.
Conclusion
Not employing long time planning and forecasting for the businesses can lead to ineffective operations management and financial crisis. Through lack of resources or employees, business owners often have to prioritize the day-to-day running of the companies over long time planning. Yet, we see when this happens, long-term success is limited.
By following these steps, you can create a clear plan for your company’s business development and long term success.
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