How To Grow Your Business Successfully?

Tips to Help Take Your Business to Greater Levels

If you are a small-business owner and want your business to grow, there are certain challenges you will need to overcome. But the right guidance and knowledge can help you overcome these challenges skillfully. This guide will show you how to grow your business by overcoming those challenges aptly.

How to Grow Your Business?

There are some aspects that entrepreneurs need to consider when planning to scale up their business. Some of them are-

Effort 

From identifying the right location, to getting a startup bank loan to advertising and recruitment, all these aspects need to be taken care of by you. You will need to negotiate the best terms with the real estate broker for the location, with the banker for your bank loan, interview candidates, and manage your existing business, all of which takes considerable time and effort. All of this needs to kept into account when planning to scale-up the business.

Sales And Marketing

To create awareness about your existing products or service, it is very important to spend on the right medium for sales and marketing. You need a professional website, have a page on different social media sites, provide introductory offers (discounts on purchases made of a certain amount), ask existing customers for references in return for shopping vouchers and so on. A sales and marketing plan is thus a must while expanding the business.

Taxes

When you decide to grow your business, you need to keep in mind that if your turnover exceeds Rs 20 lacs per year, you need to register under the Goods and Services Tax (GST). Also, as a sole proprietor, you, yourself need to file your income tax return. As a private limited company, there is a flat corporate tax rate of 25% for a turnover less than Rs. 1 crore. These GST rates along with the filing dates are constantly subject to change and must be taken into account while planning to grow the business.

Corporate Compliance

As the business grows and expands, there will be greater need for corporate compliance.  You will need to appoint an auditor, file your balance sheet, and Profit and Loss Account with the Registrar of Companies under the Companies Act, 2013. Depending on the nature of the business, there are other compliances too that the business will require, such as Shop Act, FSSAI, Udyam Registration, etc.

Action

The final challenge to grow your business will be an action plan. Be specific with regard to your growth targets (for instance, double sales in 3 years), marketing (eg-glow sign, social media presence, etc), and recruitment (freshers or experienced staff) to expand your business successfully. This can be effectively managed via a business plan that includes all the objectives and goals for the business along with the steps to be taken to achieve the same.

All the above aspects are important while planning to scale-up the business and are part of a business plan. Entrepreneurs can avail Business Planning service to help create a thorough business plan with all these aspects included in the document. This will help them have a blueprint ready to follow in order to expand their business and the document can even be used when applying for a business loan, required to expand the business.

Strategies For Expanding A Business Successfully 

Understand The Competitor’s Strategy

It is important to understand how your competitors are expanding their business. Are they using social media like Facebook or Twitter? Do they have a website?  What offers are they giving their customers? What are their strategies? Understanding the competitor’s strategy will help you have gain knowledge as what you must do and what you must avoid while expanding your business.

Design Effective Customer Loyalty Program

You can have a loyalty program for the customers, like a points based rewards program for instance. When your customers have enough reward points, they can exchange it for a product from your shop. This strategy will help attract new customers and the lure of rewards will keep them returning to your business repeatedly.

Look For New Opportunities

As an entrepreneur you must take feedback from your existing as well as potential customers, and also look at what your competitors are selling and study the latest trends in your target industry. All this analysis will help to find out what new products or services you can add to grow your business or what additions you can make to help expand the business. You can also consider product diversification by offering complimentary products. For instance, if you are in the mutual fund business, then you can also become a distributor for fixed deposits and bonds to grow your business. You can look for similar complementary products or services in your business to expand it further. 

Seek Mutually Beneficial Partnerships

Another great strategy to grow your business is to look for partnerships that are mutually beneficial. For instance, if you sell a product such as electronic equipments, you can tie up with someone who will provide after-sales service. The company providing the service can take orders for your products from customers. By looking for mutually beneficial partnerships you can help the business grow and also widen the customer base for the business.

Create A Passive Income Channel

In order to grow your business and to create additional income, you can look for passive income opportunities. For example, if you have an expertise in a particular area, then you can share your experiences on YouTube to grow your business by creating a passive income channel. Similarly, if you are in the catering business, during the off-season you can conduct classes to create a source of passive income. 

Grow Through The Acquisition Route

Another definite method to help grow your business is to look for businesses in the same industry that are successful but wish to sell their business for other reasons. Negotiate the right price and acquire them to broaden your customer base, in turn expanding your business.

Action Plan For Growing Your Business 

The action plan, which means the steps you need to take to help grow your business are as follows-

• Identify viable opportunities- Find out the best way to grow your business, either through the franchise process, social media presence, or acquiring another company.
• Write a synopsis of your business- Create a step-by-step list of how you want to grow your business including your current products, what you want to achieve, and the profile of your current and potential customers. A business plan will help you write all this in an effective and comprehensive manner.  
• Understand your strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) – Identify your strong points (e.g. quality products), weaknesses (e.g. marketing), opportunities (e.g. selling new products), and threats (e.g. bigger companies in the same industry). This will help in your business plan by giving a precise vision regarding which areas to work-on.
• Assess your resource needs- To grow your business, you will need resources in terms of manpower, finance, and inventory. You will need to make an estimate of these needs.
• Create a 5-year plan- List the sales and revenue targets for the next 5 years which you need/wish/plan to achieve. Resource planning and marketing can be planned after that. 
• Develop a financial plan to support your business plan- You will need to set aside funds from your existing profits and take loans from banks to support your business. You need to factor in the costs of loans from banks and the repayment schedule. 
• Review your plan regularly –You should look at your yearly business targets to see how you are performing and what strategies you need to apply to achieve your targets. 

Requisite Qualities To Grow Your Business Successfully

There are certain qualities you need to possess to successfully grow your business. These are:

• Discipline-You should have the discipline to stick to your business goals and try different strategies to fulfill your goals.
• Proactiveness-When you have an idea, ensure that it is implemented immediately. Follow up on others to ensure that deadlines are met. 
• Competitiveness- It is not enough to know your business well, you need to ensure that your products and services are better than your competitors. 
• Creativity-Implement creative advertising techniques, and have contests with attractive prizes to engage customers better. Design creative flyers to promote the contest offline and online. 
• Determination-Failures are a part of your experiences, you need to learn from them to succeed. 
• Strong people skills- You will have to deal with a lot of different people like customers, suppliers, and employees effectively to get results and must thus hone effective people skills. 

Get Ready to Grow Your Business

deAsra can help you grow your business with a host of services starting from business planning to marketing support. Get started now!