Growing & scaling your business – a comprehensive checklist

If you’re in business, I’m sure you are looking for ways to scale and grow your business, this checklist can get you organized and focused in the right direction.

1. Review your business goals and plans regularly. Are you achieving your goals??

Goals and plans are important – without this roadmap reaching your goals may be challenging and not clear. This is especially important if you have a team.?Having everyone know the goals and plans for the business diminishes confusion and creates clear boundaries.

2. What are your 1, 3 and 5-year goals? What are the goals and strategies to get there?

We don’t think twice about planning special events like weddings, vacations and parties. But when it comes to business, so many entrepreneurs do not have a defined plan and goals for what they would like to achieve. They may have a vision in their head but it’s not written down or broken out into 1, 3 and 5-year goals with objectives and milestones to reach along the way.?Having these front and centre helps you keep your focus on what you want to achieve.

3. Review your products and services – can you enhance them??

Is your business scalable? Do you exchange your time for money? Can you scale that? Move from a 1:1 to 1:many?

Are your products, packaging and services relevant, on point and up to the times? Depending on your industry you may need to update and refine these.

4. Review your industry, competitors and speak with your customers to get their take on your product and service delivery.

Look at the trends for your industry, and conduct some market research – this is easier than ever thanks to Google and social media. Perhaps you can see what your competitors’ customers are asking for and uncover a gap. Chat with your customers to see if there are any gaps or unmet needs in your product and services that you could fulfill.

5. Can you increase your average transaction value through bundling or expanding your products & services?

If selling products, can you incentivize a higher transaction value through offering shipping after a certain purchase amount, or bundle services together that provide more profitability and value for your customer?

6. Can you expand into new markets and customer segments?

Again, market research can uncover if there are new markets or segments of customers that you can expand into. This could be expansion into new industries, online or geographic, wholesaler, licensing etc.

7. Review your pricing strategies & profit margins, do you have regular price increases?

Has your profit margin kept up with rising costs and inflation? What pricing strategies do you use, and which are most successful and profitable?

Have you created a cash flow projection for the year ahead? Any trends you can analyze?

Do you have the funds to carry your current overhead and have some extra over for expansion?

8. Can you invest in new marketing methods or other sales channels?

Review your current marketing methods and sales channels. Are these methods still working? Are there new ones you can adopt? What about finding other sales channels or marketplaces? Are you selling online?

Review your branding and graphic design assets. Do they reflect and represent you and your business? Do they reflect current times? Most brands need a refresh every 3 – 5 years.

9. Review your marketing messaging and website messaging, are they still relevant to changing market needs?

Same with your marketing messaging, language and terms change over time. Your message needs to land in the right place with your prospects and customers and in our over-messaged world that means they need to be current and relevant.

10. Review your digital presence & footprint, can it be updated, enhanced or expanded to new channels?

Conduct an audit of your digital presence, search your name, and your keywords, look beyond the first 2 pages in Google, update any old information, and make sure your content is consistent across all your platforms. Do you have your keywords, hashtags, backlinks and keywords up to date?

11. Are there new technology platforms, workflows or processes that may be more productive for you?

Have you reviewed and analyzed your current systems, do they work the way you need them to? Do they help you automate processes and manage your customer data securely and efficiently?

Can you review your business processes and workflows and refine and streamline them for higher productivity and efficiencies?

Is it time to review your business processes for sales, marketing, admin, financials and customer experience? Are there opportunities to update workflows, automate processes and increase productivity and ultimately your profitability?

12. Are you or your team lacking any technical skills? Can you plan up-skilling and training?

In our ever-increasing tech-enabled world, do you and your team have the skills needed? Are there areas that you can enhance? Do you fully understand your financials and the levers to look at to ascertain profitability?

13. Are there opportunities to widen your network in your industry to collaborate with related and complementary businesses to both profit and reach new customers?

Are there complementary or related competitors and businesses that you can partner with to expand your current customers and markets?

14. Do you have a mentor or a coach?

Often it’s not easy to know what you don’t know and an outside perspective can deliver huge benefits and opportunities for you to capitalize on.

We don’t hesitate to get a coach or tutor for our children, but when it comes to ourselves we don’t make this a fast decision or any decision at all. A coach can get you from 0 – 100 much quicker than you would by yourself. Your coach can help you with skills building, accountability, 10,000 foot view, strategy and implementation of your new plan.?You can hire many different coaches depending on your needs. It can be a digital coach, a financial coach, a business strategist, a marketing coach etc.?This investment ROI can be phenomenal and you’ll wonder why you did not do it before.

If you’d like to grow your business now,?connect with me.