Planning the Growth of your Company: 5 Things You Cannot Miss

Disruptive ideas that tap into a market need, when mixed with hard work and persistence, turn good #business concepts into #world -changers!

Imagine this: You set up your #business based on an idea that you ruminated over?for years. Your dream of being a self-made entrepreneur is finally seeing the light of day. It could be the next best thing on the horizon. But you ask yourself the cardinal question:?HOW DO I ACTUALLY GET THERE?

While becoming an entrepreneur is a dream that many of us hope to achieve, very few tend to be successful. Even fewer?actually manage to grow and expand their #business ?after they get going.?Bringing a company to life and then making it grow requires innumerable?tangible and intangible actions behind the scenes.?

Most entrepreneurs know their goals but aren’t always clear on?how to achieve them. This is where the development and #growth ?strategy comes into the picture. The process of growing a company might sound very stressful; with numerous things requiring attention simultaneously and incessantly. With clarity on the roadmap, this rote mechanic?becomes increasingly manageable. That being said, an office space, computers up and running, and critical admin staff working are not the only ingredients that make a successful #business .

Even businesses working in exactly the same industry or sector are noticeably different from each other.?You?will almost always?know your #business ?better than anyone else. However, when you study, analyze,?and formulate?#strategies ?for the business’s growth,?you soon realize that there are a few common errors that businesses make that eventually lead to their eventual downfall. It becomes imperative then to learn from the mistakes of other businesses. This allows you to take steps and avoid making similar mistakes.

Multinationals enjoy the luxury of exploring new opportunities that may never bear fruit. This experimentation cannot be afforded by SMEs that work on far smaller budgets. An SME often cannot gamble on #expansion ?plans and remain particularly cautious about any new spending.

Being surrounded by entrepreneurs for most of my professional career, I have enjoyed and suffered experiences fraught with challenges. I have learned, often through expensive errors, how to grow a business, achieve critical goals, and break down end goals into bite-sized milestones.

If I were to go back in time and start it all over again, here are the?5 core #strategies ?I would employ.

1.?Creating a Robust Pipeline:

Get organized!

Having big goals and ambitions look great on paper. The action steps that need to be taken to achieve said goals are the real deal. If your #business ?is a projects-based organization, then securing more projects should be the unequivocal focus of all your attention and energy.?Your pipeline should be inundated with multiple quality projects that promise a steady income stream. Next, the delivery of those projects in quality and time should take the center stage. This one-two punch is the literal lifeblood of a #business ?that is a resident of the service sector.

You need a?robust lead generation process and sales funnel. If you don’t know what this is or are not familiar with the simple theory, learn it before anything else. Your #business will benefit from the clout it gathers as you generate leads and fill up the sales funnel with opportunities.

The survival and growth of your #business ?is literally hinged on the creation and sustenance of a healthy pipeline; and the ensuing foundation-level stability that it ultimately brings.

2.?Having a Multi-Pronged Approach:

Always have more than one source of income in the business. A multi-strategic perspective on the sector and industry is important so that lateral pivoting becomes easier. A #business ?in a project-specific industry can flourish by specializing in one sector. However, the #business can explore being adept in other sectors simply to hedge its risk and overexposure to a single sector’s economic fallibility.

Exploring new avenues of #business ?opportunities to generate new income sources may not always require any monetary investment. Strategically timed #growth into other sectors may be funded by creative resource allocation. In other cases, the new opportunities are inherently cost-averse by their very nature. As an example,?the primary source of income could be?from the sales of the product your company makes. However,?the secondary source of income may come from vocational?workshops for budding entrepreneurs in the same line of #business ?who are?willing to pay for formal training in that sector or industry.

It is all about analyzing the combination of #strategies that work the best and are tailor-made to your businesses as you exploit them to?generate revenue. Thinking?outside the box brings new opportunities for #growth ?and solidifies a foundation for the #business ?to grow and manage risks.

3.?Expecting, Managing, and Embracing?Risks:

#Business of any kind is inherently risky. Starting a #business while expecting no risks along the way is a fool’s errand. Learning to harness risk as a strategic tool and not handcuffs is what separates the trailblazers from generic businesses. You also can’t keep playing safe!

Playing safe incessantly will earn you many short-term successes. Expect risks, manage them, and then create systems to harness them moving forward. Backup plans are the most effective ways to plan and manage risks should things go south unexpectedly or unpredictably. One example that stands out for me is when I reduced the utilization of our office building by 33% and decided to rent that space. I promptly generated a source of income that would effectively offset a variety of financial risks that my operationally heavy manufacturing unit could suffer from. A rainy-day fund is a safety net that not only guards against but also attacks hidden risks head-on. Risks remain inevitable but?being prepared for them?is the key to ensuring sustenance and?growth.

Keeping a hawk-like tab on your financials is a sure-shot way to ensure that you avoid vampire expenditures: spending that you did not actively sanction but crept in somehow and continued to suck your life force behind the scenes.

4.?Standardization:

Standardization should be the very?essence of any business. Irrespective of the nature of your company, having a set of rules, systems, procedures,?and policies in place will supercharge?your company’s growth. This includes aligning your employees and customers with your company’s values. A company truly stands out when it has a similar cultural identity throughout the organization. Your company should have a personality that reflects your own and has an established and measured?way of thinking. Your thinking should be agile, flexible, and growth-oriented?and this should be reflected across the company’s culture, values, mission, vision, and strategy.

Establishing certain?practices as standard procedures enables the company to inherently maintain quality and build a benchmark of performance for the business. Laying down these guidelines and rules will help you build your strategy based on the culture you honed over the years. Being?consistent and inculcating?positive standard practices?is the immutable long play!

5.?Using Technology:

Technology, in its broadest sense, is why businesses exist. They use, impart, sell, and improve on a variety of technologies in one shape or form. Today, technology is understood more narrowly to mean efficiency, automation, improvement, or simplification, by changes in products, services, practices, or #business models and methodologies. Technological #luddism ?is often the very reason a #business ?quickly becomes irrelevant or loses its historical competitive advantage. The new-age concepts of disruptive tech and blue ocean #strategies were conceptualized to address this very risk, Recent technological trends often allow businesses to reduce cycle times, bring efficiencies, reduce repetitive tasks, and replace old-gen and failing legacy systems. A #business can not only save time and money but also streamline its operations to better focus on its core activities. Staying relevant is now as important to a business’s survival as managing risk, standardizing systems, and having a multi-pronged approach.

Embrace technology in a measured manner to avoid disruptive failures and also to effectively manage resistance to change both in #business operations and human resources.

6.?Separating your Core and Non-Core Business Operations (Bonus)

Classifying your #business activities into core and non-core ones allows you to focus your resources and yield results with the maximum efficient?use of resources. Identify?departments or divisions of your #business that can be outsourced to third-party specialists to quickly divest or divert resources for better utilization.?Outsourcing to external specialists reduces costs, improves #business ?focus, and channels internal resources toward the fundamental functions of the business. ?The fear of losing control when you outsource certain activities is inevitable but will quickly be replaced by elation from higher efficiency and productivity. It goes without saying that QA/QC processes, quality standards, and timely deliveries from target outsourcing remain critical for this strategy to work.

Growing any #business ?always seems insurmountable and overwhelming. Even serial and seasoned entrepreneurs often feel lost and confused. With a few focused approaches, these feelings can be transformed into confidence and grit. Find mentors and community groups that can not only provide guidance but also help learn from each other’s experiences. Next, focus on your core skills with indomitable resolve. Empower your team with your culture and processes to create a customer experience like no other.

Finally, embrace innovation, technological or otherwise,?by inviting employees and external stakeholders to contribute ideas. In many cases, such innovation comes with low lead times and negligible cost; and from those that can most easily positively affect the #business .?In times of need, these very collaborators will stand right next to you.

Growth #strategies are a dime a dozen. Implementation and the resolve to stick to the plan in the face of seemingly unavoidable failure is where a successful long-term #business separates itself from the rest. While businesses are all unique in their own ways,?all of them face similar problems?and always remain subject to change.?But that’s the very journey of an entrepreneur, isn’t it? If you feel fear and excitement at the same time, then you are most likely on the right path.

#business #strategies #growth #expansion #howtogrowyourbusiness #mytips #sumitpathak #entrepreneurship ?