Ask any small business owner and they’ll tell you that running a small business is anything but small. It takes dedication and lots of hard work to get off the ground.
Creating a process of delivering high-quality products and services to customers relies on developing an affinity with your customers through excellent engagement.
It starts with understanding market demand and size and having repeatable processes to support that market, enabling you to have a scalable business. Many product inventors come up with fantastic ideas, yet are unable to understand how they can scale their business.
Every business is unique but there are some key attributes to every successful business.
Our top tips for growing a small business
Utilise Technology
We live in an age where technology is an enabler and almost anyone can harness technology to deliver their business model locally and nationally, even globally.
Deliver the right products at the right time
The timing of your product or service must be right in the marketplace. You might have the world’s best product but if the market isn’t ready, then you may have to wait.
You will need to choose to either wait for the market to catch up or you’ll need to adjust your offering to something more in tune with the market’s current readiness.
Develop an exciting and engaging brand
Consumers are surrounded by brands everywhere they turn. Creating brand equity is crucial to building a scalable business. Choose your target audience and develop an emotional attachment to your product which keeps them repeating business.
Inspire and influence your audience. An inspirational brand message is far more influential than one that just highlights product feature functions.
Resourcing
Having a rigorous cash flow forecast and monitoring it closely is key. You must be able to fund your growth.
People also play a vital role. Successful business owners know that investment in people leads to happier customers. Growth is difficult. As a business owner, you are passionate about it, so you need your staff to feel the same.
Supplier relationship management is important, but we'll save that for another blog post in the future!
Look after yourself
Managing a small business is stressful and that stress can be relentless as there may times when there is no-one to share it with. Some business owners maintain their ‘old’ jobs during the infancy of the company, leaving their time very compressed.
Investing the time to take care of your physical and mental health is really important and will help your chances of maintaining the pace required.
Don’t try and do it all alone! This is a common trap that many self-starters fall into. While you may be able to maintain an insane workflow for a while, eventually your knees will start to buckle and your business will suffer. It can be hard to hand over the reins to someone else, however, as you grow it will become necessary.
