7 tips to grow your business
We have worked with companies in so many sectors and we’ve picked up a few hacks along the way. Here are seven great lessons we have gleaned and passed on from peers and from seeing what works. Following these pointers opens up possibilities to grow your company.
1. eat the frog
We picked up this one from an award winning business owner, who in turn took the advice from a popular book by Brian Tracy. The premise is that if you have to ‘eat a frog’ once a day, do it sooner rather than later and get on with it or it will hold you up. If you have one awful job you are avoiding that has to be done in the day, like dealing with a customer complaint, negotiating a project, explaining something that a client may not want to hear, then do it as your priority – the first thing, not the last thing. Bravery wins. Procrastination kills your momentum.
2. be the customer
Empathy reveals your customer. Ever heard of an Empathy Map Canvas? Yes – it’s classic marketing speak but it’s just about imagining what your customer feels and thinks. Your customer – who are they? What do they hear? What do they need to do? What do they see? What do they say? What are their fears, pains and what do they want? Customers form into tribes with common values and habits. Live through them and get how they connect with products and services.
3. don’t be the technician, be the manager
How will you ever scale up if you are always the one doing the front-line work? Trust people to do the work whilst you manage and oversee. Free up your time to increase the amount of clients you can take on, or to create a smoother operation. You need others to make a business grow so hire talent. Guide your team to be the best they can be. If you’re an MD and you are still the main sales guy, time to really think how you can develop other sales roles, or sales channels.
4. invest in the business
Investment is key to growth. If you don’t plough good investment back into your operation, into business development, skills, sales and marketing – you won’t grow. Imagine what your business could do if you really invested in it with a solid plan. Growth needs investment. A little risk can go a long way. There is often fear of borrowing, a fear of reinvesting money you have gained but to scale-up, get serious if you want to progress to the next level.
5. live well, with direction
Mindset is everything. Everything counts: Why you get up in the morning, where you work, how you work, what you are working for. All businesses face the same challenges, the same fails, with the same issues – so why do some prosper and some die? How you deal with challenge obviously impacts on how you grow. But it’s deeper than that, it’s about your daily routines, it’s about caring and it’s about your positivity in direction. Go into an office where the cups are unclean, where the staff are miserable, where the boss is a bully or always absent, where desks are dirty and messy, and we’ll show you a recipe for disaster.
6. give the company faces
People buy from people. It’s an oldie but it’s true. Get out there! Network, attend, present, meet up! For services it’s especially true – people like to like you to buy from you but it’s more than that. LinkedIn conducted a webinar we listened to and they found people responded much better to images of people than ‘things’ in identical posts. You need a face in front of a customer to be trusted and to feel friendly.
7. don’t drift, plot your path
Sounds obvious. But the truth is, many businesses begin, grow a little and stabalise but have not planned ahead or plan ahead as a given. A strong strategy rises you up above the survival line and the more steps you forecast and plan ahead for, the more likely that plan will succeed in delivering goals.
If you need more strategy in your business planning for sales and marketing Find Marketing Ltd has a four-stage process to work through, to enable your company to grow. After this, we can manage your marketing for you through the year with our talented creatives. Drop us a line to find out more.