How to make your business grow; 11 ideas for doing it
Do you like plants? Children? Bellies? All these things have something in common: if you take good care of them, they grow.
It also happens to business. If you have one, you probably want it to grow, but sometimes you’ll find yourself in a dead end and you won’t know how to continue. Let’s look at some ideas on how to make your business grow, see if you get inspired and get it to grow non-stop.
Open more offices
Alright, Captain Obvious, thank you for your advice.
Okay, it’s the most obvious way to make a business grow, and that’s enough of a reason not to forget it. Before you get into more complex formulas, you may need to evaluate whether you can open more establishments. Give yourself some time to analyze it, and then make a decision.
Reach franchise agreements
You may have decided, after some thoughtful thinking, that opening new branches isn’t worth it. A similar but different option is found in franchises.
This is not a post dedicated to analyze neither the benefits nor the disadvantages of the franchise system. That’s part of your job. But it’s a formula that you should evaluate if you intend to grow your business. Some companies have done very well with this system and have expanded around the world. Does it fit your business?
Try to reach big customers
Up to now, dealing with small and medium sized clients has gone very well for you, but it may be time to start working with larger companies. Is your business ready to serve larger customers, such as public administrations? If the answer is “yes,” you may have the solution to your desire to continue growing right there.
Launch new products
Alright, the strawberry-flavored pacifiers you make are a hit with all the national babies. But sales won’t get much further. Have you thought about launching other products? The parents of these babies may need baby bottles, for example. Haven’t you thought about it?
OK, it’s a very basic example, but you, as an expert in your products and services, for sure have good ideas for offering new items to your customers. And if you don’t have them, you just need to ask them. Often, they will be the best source for new ideas. Ask them and find out what they need, so an assortment of new products will start to take shape.
Look for new sales channels
Wouldn’t you like your bacon flavored doughnuts to be sold in more places than your neighborhood bakery? You may not have enough money or access to credit to open more sale points, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stay the way you are. You can contact other companies and reach agreements to let you sell your products in their establishments. You will have to pay commissions for such use, but it can lead to a significant saving in expenses, at times when you can not assume them.
Look for new markets
There are currently 194 countries in the world. As you know, some of them are small and others are huge. A few thousand people live in some of them, and hundreds of millions in others. Each one has its own culture, traditions and even different legislations.
Making the decision to expand a business abroad is not an easy task. Evaluate the pros and cons thoroughly. Act with common sense and intelligence (it may not make much sense to export oriental-style fans to Greenland). Calculate expenses and potential benefits. Find out more about all the issues involved and decide accordingly.
Use the internet
A new sales channel that will also allow you to expand internationally can be Internet. Online commerce has its peculiarities, but if you are able to dominate it, it can mean a significant jump in your sales, and take you beyond what you could imagine.
Encourage your team
It may seem like an easy (and even expensive) way out, but it’s still effective. If your team is motivated to sell more, it is likely to sell more. There are many ways to do this, but usually the economic ones are the most effective. You thought you were gonna make your business grow without splashing out? There are some ways to do so, but they don’t rule out the possibility that you reward your people for doing their job well.
Recover your old clients
Many customers who stop buying do not do so because they have had a bad experience, but simply because they have forgotten that it exists. Recovering old customers can be easier than finding new customers. Contact them, give them a sense of reconciliation and explain to them why they should count on you again.
Offer great products and great customer service
Your business may not be growing, not because you’re not able to get new customers at a good pace, but because they don’t stay with you for long. Are you offering great products with great value for money? Do you give good customer service? Perhaps, before you look outward you should look inward and make things work better…
Get the necessary technology
Do your workers note incidents on the margins of a newspaper’s sports pages? Does your inventory consist of a piece of paper glued to the wall? Using 19th century tools in the middle of the 21st century can be like throwing nails under your company’s wheels. In our world, all businesses need technology to keep growing. You got the one you need? If the answer is “no”, maybe there’s a reason why you’re not thriving as you would like to…
Now that you know 11 ways to grow your business, you should know that there are software tools that can help you make your business work better. Do you know Integria IMS? Integria IMS is a software that has very useful tools, such as an incident management system, an inventory or a project manager. If you want to know everything that Integria IMS has to offer, just click here: https://integriaims.com/