First choose your growth strategy – focus on sales or increase your profits. Then ask yourself the following questions to start assessing whether your business has or is able to get what it needs to successfully implement your growth strategy.
1. Products/Services
• Are you seeing demand increasing for your products and services or is it slowing?
• Which ones take a great deal of resources but are hard to sell or get a good price for? Are there products/services that are actually costing you money?
• Are there products or services that could enhance your existing offerings and would be natural add-ons?
2. Price
• What do you think will happen if you raise your prices? Have you asked your customers?
3. Customers
• Do you know who your best customers are? Have you got any tools or databases that help you know your customers better and manage your relationship with them? Do you track and follow-up with customers? Are you able to do this systematically?
• Which of your customers give you referrals? Do your customers have the information they need to help you sell your products or services?
4. Marketing
• Do you have a marketing plan for growth?
• What are some possible new ways of distributing your product or service?
5. Supporting Operations
• Do you have your processes defined and your procedures documented?
• What is the next smallest amount of space or equipment you can rent or buy? For example, do you need 20% more space to increase your sales by 2%?
• Should you get more help? If yes, what kind of help do you need and how will you get it? Will you hire an employee, contractor or set up a strategic alliance with another company?
• Will you have a positive cash flow each month? If not, how will you meet your financial commitments? Will you need more money to grow? For example, if you want to introduce a new product or service, will it take a large capital investment?
Women’s Enterprise Centre is the go-to place for BC women business owners for business loans, skills training, business advisory services, resources, publications and referrals. For more information on growing your business so its right for YOU, download our free Growing Your Business resource guide or call 1.800.643.7014 for more information.
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