The common cause behind most SMB’s struggle and failure

Be it out of compulsion to support their ordinary income enforced by today’s high living standards or be it out of sheer fondness for business, more and more people are taking interest in starting up small and medium scale businesses as mentioned in our previous blog. On the other hand, more than half these SMB-Entrepreneurs struggle to see their businesses through to the fifth year while others call it a quit not long after their start-ups. Though the causes for their demise vary from one entrepreneur to another; one of the main causes these SMB-Entrepreneurs share in common is the lack of growth strategy for their respective businesses. Thus, for you young SMB-Entrepreneurs out there, we would like to spare this blog post explaining what Business Growth Strategy means and what you can do to refine them if you already have them in place.

 

What is Business Growth Strategy?

Unless you are a happy-go-lucky person who plans to open a beverage or a food stand on community fairs and make the best out it; no other entrepreneur aims on establishing a business for a certain duration and be content with the little profit they can make in that time span. The idea is to set up a business that not only keeps developing but keeps yielding better outcome at the same time, irrespective of the scale of your businesses. Hence, Business Growth Strategy are those long-term contingency plans which will help your business to overcome commonly faced obstacles and thrive on a yearly basis.

 

Must have Growth Strategies and ways to refine them

Now that you are familiar with what business growth strategy are meant for, let us take you through some of the initial growth strategies you must have in place and how you can refine them if you already have them at play:

 

  • Recognizing your selling points

With SMB’s being the viable options as they are since they do not take up huge investments as large-scale businesses do, the number of SMB-Entrepreneurs entering the market are increasing considerably. What this does is that it leads to parallelism in interest in terms of the concepts with which they operate their businesses.  Hence, be it new or existing SMB-Entrepreneurs, the first growth strategy you must have at play is to identify your value propositions, meaning you must be clear on the benefits that separates your services or your products from the rest. That way, your businesses will gain relevance and credibility among your target audience.

 

How to refine this growth strategy

Once you have figured out the selling points of your services or products, make them even better because that will ultimately add to their quality and give you the much-needed confidence to march forward with full swing.

 

  • Identifying your set customers

Like a ship without directions and destination is lost at sea, a business which is yet to identify its target audience is not going anywhere either.

Along these lines, the second growth strategy that needs to be at play is to know your audience. That way, you will not be wasting valuable time and money while carrying out your marketing campaigns as you will have a fixed set of customers to focus on.

 

How to refine this growth strategy

Once you have figured out who your potentials customers are, better your services or product lines as per their needs along with specified marketing campaigns. This will help you to achieve maximum customer satisfaction which in turn will maximize your customer retention. Remember, customer retention is integral for the longevity of every business.

 

 

  • Streamlining the profitable services or products

With the ever-increasing SMB-Entrepreneurs as previously mentioned, one of the drawbacks that you will be faced with is the change in your customers’ view points towards your services or products. This sudden change will affect your income streams which you once thought could be relied upon for sustenance for the years to come. Therefore, the next growth strategy you will have to put into play is to streamline those services or products which is and will keep generating a high amount of income for your businesses.

 

How to refine this growth strategy

While the process of streamlining those high-income services or products are imperative; what is even more imperative is to not ignore those new streams of income which you think might help you bring in more revenue.

 

  • Constant supervision of the growth strategies at play

One cannot simply go about your business as usual expecting growth to come as a result of putting the aforementioned strategies at play. Constant vigilance is required to understand how effective they are and what can be done to make them function even better.

 

How to refine this growth strategy

Along with keeping a close eye on your growth strategies at play, it is also crucial that you be on a look out for the various strategies being used by others in the same game. That way, you will be able to position yourself better in terms of being neck to neck if not ahead of your competitors.

 

 

  • Being open to changes

The last line of growth strategy that you must have at play is having it in yourself to change under various circumstances. Being traditional and orthodox with your business ethics, regardless of the size of your business will only lead to your fall, especially in an ever-changing world like today.

 

How to refine this growth strategy

While willing to change is all well and good; do not wait for the change to show up on its own. Try and foresee the upcoming trends and apply changes to your growth strategies accordingly so as to be able to stay in the game for as long as you can.

 

Bottom line   

While the whole concept of running your SMB’s by means of having them based upon previously cited growth strategies are rewarding; growth strategies to be applied and their effectiveness depends greatly on the nature and circumstance of your businesses. But with SMB-Experts at BERYL8, you will have nothing to worry about because we offer consultation services that best suits your conditions. For your earliest appointment, please contact us at contact@beryl8.com.