Leadership and Training and Development Program:
This one of the most important part of your overall growth strategy that is neglected by many. Your team is the most important part of your overall growth strategy. Giving them the tools, resources and skills to execute your plan and vision are vital to achieving your overall results. Training and development increases employee loyalty, creates emotional intelligence, gains commitment, helps maintain brand identity, it allows the company to create a long term plan for the future and most important it helps alleviate customer concerns and promotes opportunity for future customer growth.
Sales and Marketing Should Align:
The words sales and marketing are often used in the same sentence. However, these vital functions provide very different, but equally important contributions to an organizations strategy and end result. Marketing is and should be considered a vital investment for the financial success of an organization. Sales without an appropriate marketing function or strategy is costlier, less effective and reduces the bottom line profits.
Do You Have A Formal Referral Program:
Data research conclusively demonstrates that customer referrals are a significant and effective way to grow your business, but an extremely underutilized business strategy. According to Dale Carnegie, 91% of Happy business customers are more than willing o give a referral, but only 11% are asked. Creating a formal referral program can allow your customers to help you grow by becoming a brand ambassador for you.
Expand Your Offerings:
Be aware of your customers short term and long-term needs. They are consistently changing. Having some type of market research program, voice of customer, voice of employee, industry trends etc….enables you to anticipate their future needs and position yourself to service them before your competition does. Market research gives your organization to be first to the market or at least a disruptor in the game.
Focus on Customer Relationships:
Increasing Client retention by 5% can increase profits. Providing excellent customer service, brand awareness, knowledge and education creates long term and loyal customers. Develop a consistent customer communication strategy is extremely important to short term and long term growth. Newsletters, drip marketing, client educational seminars, LinkedIn Posts etc….create a consistent program to keep your customers informed, become the industry expert. Upselling or cross selling customers is significantly more cost effective and cost efficient than bringing on a new client. Important, Know your product penetrations rates per customer.
Develop Strategic Partnerships:
Strategic partnerships often allow you to support larger clients or a business opportunity together. Dedicated relationships with dedicated partners that may provide additional support or product offerings can prove to be beneficial to your bottom line. It is important to engage in professional help, including legal, financial and business experts to form the partnership is the best approach for profitability and long-term success
Become a Recognized Thought Leader/Subject Matter Expert:
This is a tremendous way to elevate your reputation, build brand equity and as well as attract ideal clients. Sharing your knowledge and experience is an effective strategy to growing your client base as well as adding more services to your existing customer base. Examples, Social media Outlets, Podcasts, Video, Speaking Engagements, Seminars, Events etc…to showcase your knowledge and experience. Having a deliberate strategy is extremely important to your growth and exposure.
Increase Your Geographic Reach:
Focusing on a manageable geography is important and smart. Also, developing opportunities to expand your customer reach is a significant growth strategy that should be pursued in a very strategical and planned approach. Market research is important to this planned approach to ensure customer requirements, logistics, staffing, internal resources and additional costs are addressed. An unplanned and un researched move could be very costly to your bottom line.
Elevate Your Brand:
For a small business or any business for that matter, your brand should continue to evolve as it can truly unlock competitive advantages to your company and your competition. Your brand is one of the most important areas to differentiate your products and services that are out there similar to you. Without a solid and strategic brand identity it could prove costly to your overall growth or lack of. Often if a company does grow, its brand remains status quo, stale and often becomes ineffective as you work to grow your customer base or enter into a new market. It is critical to remember as you continue to strive for company growth, you must also elevate your brand and communication to address the new market requirements.
Learn How To Say No:
This is often a big challenge for businesses who are striving to grow. The ability to confidently work with difficult customers, to walk away from a business opportunity that may not be the right fit or to end customer relationships requires a great deal of self confidence and discipline. The wrong customer could be detrimental to your overall growth. Learning to say “No” when it makes sense can be very beneficial to you and the organization.
Develop a New Customer/Client Base:
Having a focused effort on gaining new customers in new market sectors, geography or segments is prudent toward your overall growth strategy. Knowing when to engage in a new customer acquisition program requires a well thought out strategic approach with flawless implementation. Simply put, make sure you have a pan for onboarding a new customer as well as the internal or external resources to handle the growth.
Optimize Your Memberships and Partnerships:
Many organizations expend significant funds to be affiliated with business, trade or memberships of other organizations or associations. Make sure you are maximizing your opportunities to share your knowledge and expertise, to elevate your executive profile and to build mutually beneficial business relationships. You also could serve on a committee or serve on a board. Sharing your knowledge and experience helps bring awareness to your organization and the product or services you provide.
Manage Your Customer Acquisition Costs:
Opportunity cost is the value of the forgone activity or alternative if another option is chosen. Opportunity costs comes into play in any decision that involves a tradeoff between one or more options. The cost associated with the customer acquisition process is an important measure for a business to evaluate in combination with how much value each customer brings to the business. Your customer acquisition costs evaluation should be relative to your pricing strategy.