3 Elements to Small Business Growth

Business growth doesn’t happen by accident. You must put in the time. Also, you must execute the right strategies. There’s a long list of factors to consider in growing a small business. Here are three basic elements that can make a critical difference when you’re trying to grow your business.

Products and Services

Have you ever seen a laserdisc? If you haven’t, you’re not alone. Laserdiscs are shiny oversized CD-style discs that produce high-quality video. The big silvery discs and players hit store shelves in the late 1970s when the home video market was new. They should have been a big hit but that never happened, at least not in America. They paved the way for the much smaller CD but perhaps the technology (or the price) were ahead of their time.

These days laserdiscs have a cult following. You can still buy them, mostly used and refurbished, on eBay and occasionally on Amazon. Fortunately, Phillips, the original manufacturer, had a whole line of products to maintain their business growth. Otherwise, their company would have crashed and burned, just like the laserdisc.

Products and services are important to business growth. They define your business, your customers, and your income. They’re the reason you get excited each time you open your door or check your email for online orders. You can build a company on one successful product, but that one product can only take you so far. You must maintain the initial excitement with newer, better products and services.

Customers

Your company’s business growth is tied to how many products or services your customers buy. That’s a rather obvious concept but it’s not always easy to pull off. First, you must accept that everyone who enters your store or sees your website isn’t going to need or want or even care about what you sell. Second, you must understand that no matter what role you assume in your company, finding customers and marketing products is still your job.

As sales and marketing expert, Gregg Schwartz, explains in his SCORE article, “…as a small business owner, your first job title at your company needs to be ‘salesperson.’ ” It’s up to you to figure out who your customers are and where you can find them. Only then can you put your products or services within their reach. You can develop a customer-driven business growth strategy using several methods.

• Informal or formal marketing research
• Test marketing to see which customers respond positively
• Asking potential customers what they want and creating a product to meet their needs
• Brainstorming to develop a customer persona and targeting that demographic

Cash flow

When you’re serious about business growth, you understand the importance of cash flow. You must have access to a stream of ready cash to keep your inventory and marketing efforts on track. You need a dependable system that tracks your cash, handles your receivables and makes your money available to do what you need to do. Without consistent, reliable cash flow, you can easily spend yourself out of business.

We Can Help

At Goode Bookkeeping & Consulting, our accounting professionals handle bookkeeping, invoice management, payroll, bill pay, and more. We can’t develop your new products or find your new customers, but our small business services will keep your cash flow on track. We provide the services and the tools that help you focus on business growth.

To learn more, give us a call at (860) 968-2345 or complete our online contact form.