After all your hard work, your business is finally growing.
But if you fail to take deliberate steps, this growth may not last long.
As with everything else in life, small businesses experience ups and downs.
So, what do you do to sustain the growth of your business over time?
In this article, we share a few tips you can implement to sustain the growth of your small business.
For a business to grow and sustain its growth over time, it needs a plan and a strategy.
Unfortunately, many Nigerian small businesses run without a plan, or if they do have a plan, it is not well articulated or has long been abandoned.
Small business owners must be able to forecast what level of growth they want for their businesses in the next five to ten years.
And set out action steps and strategies to achieve their goals.
To be honest, sustaining the growth of any business would require a lot of effort.
And the business owner cannot reliably do all that is needed to grow the business consistently by him/herself.
The solution? Create capacity.
Your business would need to build a team of talented professionals who can take initiative and do what is necessary to grow your business with or without you.
These employees need the right skills and motivation to increase the overall productivity of your business and keep the growth sustained.
Employees who are staked in the company’s growth are more likely to commit to long-term growth for your small business.
You can make them co-owners of the business. This is one practice that has been popularized in today’s world by startups, but more small business owners should implement and execute similar strategies to get employees invested.
You’ll also need to build systems. They are critical to multiplying the efforts of your employees and freeing up enough time you can channel into other activities that impact your bottom line.
For your business to grow, it needs revenue.
To sustain growth, it must consistently generate more revenue at favourable margins.
To do that, you have to generate more sales as the business grows.
Making long-term investments in your sales team, so they have the necessary skills and resources to generate more sales is critical.
But you also have to be aware that sales are just one side of the revenue equation.
Your cost of doing business has to improve over time too.
To make more money as sales increase, you need to reduce your acquisition costs, production costs, etc.
Many business owners tend to lose focus over time, and this has cost many the growth they worked so hard for.
They get distracted from what matters to their customers and pursue trends outside their core competence.
This dangerous mistake must be avoided at all costs.
Small business owners must clearly define what value their business brings to customers and teach themselves and their employees to say no to doing any activity or projects that are outside that.
It can be difficult, but the alternative might mean the death of your small business.
Any business that wants to sustain its growth needs to always be on the lookout for fresh insights.
Because relying on just the stale judgement of the top management for consistent growth would not be enough.
Small business owners must create a structure that makes it easier for employees, customers and other external experts to share feedback or ideas with them.
It is not enough to have a feedback box in your office or run a survey every year.
Business management must be willing to receive these external inputs with an open mind.
PLUS: Whenever you’re ready, here are ways you can work with us in starting, growing and scaling your business:
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2. Get personal, one-on-one help with growing your business. Accelerate your results with coaching from me and my team. CLICK HERE.
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