How To Get Your Small Business Unstuck

Small businesses sometimes get stuck and find it hard to grow.

They reach a stage where growth flattens across major areas like sales, revenue etc.

In this article, we discuss a few steps you can take to get your business unstuck and growing again.

1. Identify The Problem

The first step to helping your small business get unstuck is to identify why you’re stuck in the first place.

There are many reasons for being stuck, and it’s not often the same reason for every business.

So, you need to sit down with your team and review your business to understand why your growth has been flattening.

It may be your sales, your profit is narrowing, your business cannot sustain growth, or the market is in decline – whatever the reason – the best first step is to identify it.

2. Review Your Strategies/ Try New Ideas

If your business is stuck or your growth is flattening, it means that your strategies are no longer as effective as they once were.

Hence, it’s time to review your strategies and weed out what is no longer working.

It is also great to try new things and do things differently from how you have been doing them so far.

Here are a few actions you could implement to ensure your business always gets new ideas and avoid being stuck:

• Create an environment that encourages employers to openly share new ideas and challenge the traditional way of doing things.
• Be always ready and willing to receive feedback from customers.
• Institute experimentation into your business; make sure your business is always ready to try new ideas, implement innovations and take risks necessary for growth.

3. Do More Of What’s Already Working

It is crucial that you also take note of the areas where your business is doing well.

When you understand what’s already working, you can invest more effort, time and resources towards maximising the returns your business can extract from such areas.

4. Find Specific Solutions

As I mentioned in the first step, what causes Company A to be stuck might differ from what causes Company B to get stuck.

The best solution is to identify the areas where the business is failing and implement solutions that cater to those problems.

The deeper you can get to the root cause of the problems your business is facing, the better your solutions.

Here are five steps you can follow to find solutions for whatever obstacle is keeping your business stuck.

• Define the problem & make sure everyone understands the root cause.
• Seek input & brainstorm possible solutions with your team and business coach/mentors
• Conduct market research and customer outreach where necessary
• Prioritise all the solutions generated according to their feasibility, costs and sustainability and pick the top one.
• Then assign responsibilities, and set a deadline and metrics for measuring how well the solution performs.

If you need help getting your small business unstuck and growing again, contact Mr Ted Iwere today!!!

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