By Harold Gardiner at https://retiredtoinspired.com/
Every healthy, growing company reaches a growth threshold after being in business for a while. Work processes are established, customer footfall is high, market conditions are good, and the future looks bright. If you’re experiencing similar conditions with your business, it may be time to expand. To help ensure you don’t make mistakes and make optimal use of resources, Top Gear Technologies offers critical considerations you should make when growing:
Have you created a concrete plan with a fallback option?
Ideally, you need to have an expansion strategy in place with concrete short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals to achieve. This is how you can best direct your efforts in the best direction. Chron offers common growth strategies such as market penetration, product expansion, diversification, and acquiring other companies. Furthermore, it may also be a good idea to have a fallback ready if things don’t go to plan.
Do you have a solid grasp of market conditions and customer pain points?
Market conditions will significantly influence how much traction your growth initiative – such as a new product, diversification, or penetrating into a new market – would gain. If demand is high and the competition low, it’ll be easier to succeed. Knowing customer pain points and addressing them better than your competitors is also important.
Is there funding to achieve your goals?
You will need enough capital for your various expansion-related goals. Experts recommend a 13-week cash flow forecast during times of cash crunches, which a time of expansion might be. It may help your company avoid financial distress like missed payrolls, debt defaults, and bankruptcy.
Do you have a good team and strategic partners?
You may need new employees to make meeting your expansion goals possible (such as manning your new office). It’s crucial that you have a well-oiled recruiting, onboarding, and training process in place if that’s the case. You may also need to find strategic partners that help you achieve your growth-related goals.
Do you have good work processes?
You need strong, resilient work processes that are efficient and scalable. When you expand, your current work processes will be tested. Technology can help here, as can technology partners. For instance, you can partner up with Top Gear Technologies for a slew of managed IT services – from web solutions to remote hosting – that make running your business easier.
Do you have a market strategy to attract attention and find customers?
Solid marketing is essential to the success of every expansion strategy. For instance, you need marketing to raise interest in your new product or service as well as make your brand accessible and memorable to customers. You can use a variety of online and offline marketing strategies for this, such as email marketing, SEO, PPC, billboards, and flyers. Investopedia explains marketing strategies in detail.
Do you have the right business structure?
Having a business structure such as an LLC affords multiple benefits to your business. Some examples are making you more attractive to investors, limited liability (against lawsuits), tax advantages, less paperwork, and more flexibility. Every state has its own rules and regulations around LLC formation. Be sure to check the rules in your state before moving ahead. If you’d rather not do the paperwork on your own, you can avoid hefty lawyer fees by using a formation service.
Are your customers safe from cyber threats?
You will need to protect your business and customers from cyber threats while expanding, especially if you’re operating in a field like healthcare that involves the storage of highly sensitive data. If you’re running a healthcare-related business, traditional cybersecurity tools may not be enough to protect your patients’ information. Look for a cybersecurity solution with situational ePHI awareness designed specifically for healthcare to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and security of patients’ protected health information.
Do you need a bigger, professional-looking office or retail space?
You may need to find a larger office or retail space if your current one isn’t enough (or if you need something bigger as a part of your expansion drive). You can add metal lettering with your business’ name in your office lobby to help reflect the professional image you want to portray. Sign letters are available in a wide range of metals, including aluminum, stainless steel, copper, brass, and bronze. These letters are easy to install and can be added to virtually any wall surface, including the interior office drywall – check it out for more info.
Do the numbers back it all up?
Last, but not least, don’t forget to take a look at the numbers. This includes your finances as well as other crucial business metrics like customer acquisition rate, revenue growth rate, churn rate, and lead response. Numbers don’t lie. If they’re painting a positive picture of current business conditions, your expansion drive is likely to succeed.
Conclusion
Growth won’t be easy. There may be challenges along the way – changing market conditions, employee issues, customers expecting too much, cyber threats and you having to make related cybersecurity upgrades, and more. Having a solid strategy backed by focused effort will keep you going and ensure you pull off your expansion initiative successfully.
Image via Unsplash
