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Business growth is a rewarding process for entrepreneurs who launched their venture on a tight budget. Starting a small business or a startup is hugely challenging. Budget and lack of resources are the main difficulties they have to handle to make growth possible.
However, more and more businesses choose to forego growth or delay it as much as possible. Why would an entrepreneur decide against business growth? As it happens, growth is a double-edged sword. While it can drive profits and brand awareness, growth can be highly damaging for inexperienced business owners. It is a transformative process that affects the team, the business processes, and the overall strategy. Accompany that grows too fast could get overwhelmed by the new pace of activities and demands. Alternatively, business owners have been known to lead their company in the wrong direction, wasting growth potential for false opportunities.
The bottom line: You could grow out of control. So how do you transform your business structure effectively to make expansion and profits safe?
Plan what you want to achieve
Only half of startups and small businesses survive more than 5 years. Business experts agree that failure to develop a growth strategy plan can contribute to business collapse and bankruptcy. Indeed, to be controllable, growth needs to be part of your strategy. Your business plan acts as a compass that makes your choices not only better informed but also deliberate. What should your business map out to make growth sustainable and manageable?
The easiest answer is everything! Indeed, your plan needs to identify your long term customers as growth will propel your business outside of its local market range. You need to be clear about what attracts your growth audience, as your value proposition will differentiate your brand from your competitors. Too many thriving local businesses lose their brand identity in the process because they don’t understand their USP in a new market. Finally, the plan also highlights the optimal growth pace the business can afford and the resources and activities to achieve it.
Trust what you see in the recruitment process
Bringing your business to the next level requires additional skills. Finding talented professionals that suit your business culture and can fulfill their roles in the growth process is no easy task. Your approach to the recruitment process is crucial to solidify the growth process. Recruiting is a lengthy and costly process! However, don’t be tempted to speed it up. Vetting applicants takes time, but it is an essential step to success. You don’t want to hire someone who doesn’t meet your criteria. Therefore, you can’t afford to skip skill tests and pre employment medical assessments. These time-demanding steps can make the difference between a candidate who’s only good on paper and a great match for the business.
Understand the importance of networking
Last but not least, many new entrepreneurs build a solitary and isolated growth process. Growing your business is both an internal and external process. As a result, networking can support your brand as it approaches new markets and audiences. Focusing on networking enables entrepreneurs to build bridges with potential growth partners and mentors who can assist during the process.
Growth transforms a business. Yet, the transformation is not always for the better if it isn’t planned and prepared strategically. Think of it as building a house extension. You can’t add another floor to your building unless you’ve got solid foundations, a design that maps where and how to build the extensions, and experts who can advise on the project.
