Considerations When Growing Your Business

Growing your business, scaling it up, increasing your revenue… whatever you would like to call it. It can be tricky, takes time, resources, and money too. You’re effectively going to be improving everything about your business. From the business model, the invoicing structure and there might be a need for a fresh look at things like your employment contracts too.

Your organizational skills will need to be improved at a minimum, or if they are already excellent, they’ll need to be capitalized on. You’re clients and how you deal with them are going to change too. 

What surprises most people is there might not be an obvious point that is the right time to grow. Often you’ll need to go on how things in the business feel. Are you finding yourself working longer hours? Has there been a marked increase in the income of your business? Have you had to consider hiring more people?

Here are some things to consider:

Sales Funnel

Almost all businesses will have a sales funnel, and there will be multiple people or companies at a range of places within that funnel. Some business owners implement one early, but many put them in place later to help facilitate growth. Have a look at your sales funnel, how it could be improved, and this can help you more easily manage your growth. Here is an excellent article on the subject from Nick Tubis, who sits on the Forbes Council - How to build an online sales funnel to grow your business. 

New Opportunities

There is likely going to be a range of opportunities that arise as you grow. You’ll need to take calculated risks and put your time and energy in the ones that make the most sense for you. In the early days of business, there are some opportunities that aren’t possible without the right infrastructures in place. 

This could be down to your shipping method, needing to move from smaller posts to something more substantial like warehouses and conveyor systems. It could be your production abilities, requiring you to move from shorter product runs to more substantial ones that work better for merchants. 

Competition

One thing that changes as you grow is the competition. Unless you have created the market you are in, the chances are you have experience researching your competition. However, the bigger you get, the bigger they are too, And the more likely it is they are putting a lot more money into marketing and have bigger teams managing their moving parts. 

You should try to make sure that you keep an eye on the competition as often as possible. Similar Web covers research on your market, competitors and customers, marketing strategies, investors, and sales. There is a free option - but if you want to get more information, you’ll need to ‘talk to a consultant.’ 

Facilitating growth means that you need to have as much information and lay the foundations as much as possible. It can be the turning point for a freelancer to turn into a small enterprise or a small to medium company to start going global.