By Samuel Rosenberg
WHETHER you are a small local business or a large global brand, you are always looking at ways to grow your business. Business may be anywhere between thriving and poor, but developing growth is always your next step and goal. How can you grow your business by thinking beyond all of the usual ideas?
On occasions it is best to think about what always works within your business and industry and occasionally you may consider drastic contradictory measures that will help stand your business apart from your competition.
You will always focus on opportunities to acquire new customers and continually assess how your existing customers can return time and time again – and bring friends and family with them.
By improving your products and services you can become the best in the marketplace and this will always drive business to your door. Being better than the competition is always an easier way to success, compared to offering average products that are easily attainable everywhere.
Information about your business is important. Being able to track the products which are selling well will help you ensure that you always have those items in stock. By speaking with your customers, you can find out what they want and stock your shelves before your competitors.
Growing your business may give you the opportunity to open another location, but you must be confident you can control both locations before placing a manager in one or the other.
For those thinking higher, you can turn your business into a franchised opportunity, but this development can be expensive in the early days and will take time away from running your current operation.
Where another location or franchising is not right for you, you may be able to license your product, particularly if it is branded and legally only belongs to you. Other business managers may wish to sell your specific product or service and pay you a licence fee for every sale.
Some business operators form an alliance, which may be with a friendly competitor or a business unrelated to your own. When more establishments are selling your product, your profits should increase.
You can look at diversifying your products and services by introducing new opportunities for your customers to purchase from you. By offering multiple streams of income, particularly those that fill the slower periods, especially when you offer seasonal products, you can increase your profits when you least expect it.
Merging your business with another may give you the opportunity where you will always be bigger than an individual business. This may lose you an element of control, but it may make you more money over the longer term. As an alternative, you might decide to acquire other businesses that are complimentary to your own.
Some products and services work globally as well as locally. By considering the opportunities available to sell over the Internet with e-commerce websites and software, you may dramatically increase your overall sales.
There is almost no limit to the ways you can grow your business. Sometimes you have to think small and on other occasions by thinking big you may bring the rewards and successes that will help your family and employees for years to come.
(Samuel Rosenberg is the founder and CEO of Axcel Finance Ltd., the leading regional microfinance institution. Share your thoughts and email your questions to [email protected]