Growing Your Small Business

Entrepreneurs often find themselves so caught up in the daily running of their businesses that expansion plans end up on the back burner for some other time. The problem though, is that growing your business is a must, otherwise you’ll be like the proverbial hamster running round and round in that wheel, chasing your own tail instead of achieving real progress.
There are many ways to approach small business growth but underlying each of them, there must be a strategy. Whatever your plans for growth are, they must cover two aspects in detail: short term growth and long term growth.
Short term growth addresses what you will do in the immediate future to make sure that you are moving upwards in the growth curve. This will include things like increasing your customer base, working at improving customer relations, so that you can create repeat business, your marketing strategy and even what you do in back office terms to ensure that operations become smoother and smoother over time. All these will affect profitability in the short term. If you have effective strategies for them, they will help your business grow on a day to day basis.
Your long term plan for business growth is usually planned for the next few years to come. Many businesses opt to look at long term growth as 2 to 3 year strategies. Others, especially small businesses that have been operational for more than 3 years, might look at long term growth strategy in 5 year bites. Long term growth is about business expansion on the larger scale. You have been using your short term strategy to get more customers, to get more repeat sales, and now you can plan to aim for a certain number of clients every year so that every few years you can open a new shop. You might also introduce new products in your long term strategy. You might plan to increase your product base every 3 to 5 years.
It’s important to know that each business is unique and individual circumstances will determine how you plan your expansion. It’s dangerous to plan along the lines of what you see another business doing. Look at your own business as an entity that has features of its own and then based on these features, go ahead and plan for both short and longer term growth.
Remember also that while strategies should be followed, you must allow yourself to be flexible. If you stick too rigidly to plans, you may miss the opportunities that show up from time to time that can benefit your business. Sometimes these opportunities have to be embraced, and it may mean that your strategy is left aside for a little while but being able to seize an unexpected opportunity while not losing sight of your growth strategy, is what growing a small business is all about.

About the guest author: Dane has worked with small business planning for many years in his role as a business finance advisor. He started SmallBusinessWizardry.com as a free resource for those looking for advice onstarting a small business.