4 Ideas To Take Your Business to the Next Phase
Maybe it’s been a couple of days, or a couple of months, or a couple of years since you started your business but you feel you’ve hit a wall. You’re probably wondering how to get others to see the value you have to offer.
Scaling a business is hard for everyone. You have to learn the fundamentals of sales, marketing, taxes, and operations. What can you do to get to the next phase? To stay relevant and grow, here are 5 steps you can try:
Build Your Sales Funnel and Utilize a Customer Management System
A sales funnel illustrates the ideal journey it takes for your prospect to become an opportunity. At the initial stage, as you market your products or services, not a lot of people will provide contact information or join your email list. The few that provide are considered “prospects”. Out of these prospects, only a fraction will eventually become “opportunities”. Sales funnel helps you understand your prospects better and automate your business.
As you start building out your funnel and grow in company size, it’s advisable to use some management system. A Management system help you automate certain processes like email marketing, and accounting. Companies like HubSpot and Salesforce can help with sales and marketing while Quickbooks can be used for accounting.
Form Strategic Partnership and Leverage Networking Events
With the right strategic partnership, you could tap into a wide swath of potential opportunities. As a young business, identify companies that complement your offerings and propose opportunities for working together.
Attend networking events. it’s not enough to just have a good product or service; it’s not what you know but who knows you. Investing in the the time to build your network allows you to build and nurture relationships. Hosting your own events is another way to expand your networks; you can invite customers and their friends.
Diversify Your Product and Service
Look for other uses of your offerings. How do they complement other products or services? What other value can they provide? Diversifying allows you to have multiple streams of income and is a growth strategy. An example is being a paid speaker in your target industry, and selling complementary products or services. Identifying new opportunities within your niche provides you more opportunities to grow
Extend Your Market
Bill Gates said that there will be only two kinds of businesses: those with an Internet presence, and those with no business at all.” Leveraging online platforms and licensing deals could increase your growth opportunity. In the commerce space, using platforms like Amazon increases your product or service awareness. Airbnb and HomeAway to name a few can be used to rent vacation homes.
Exploring licensing and franchise deals is another way to grow without too much added work. What other countries can your product or service benefit from? Can you expand globally?
Next Steps…
Now you have some ideas to explore. You’ve made it this far and can experience more growth. Try some or all of these steps and share what you learned so that others could benefit as well.
