Published on August 29th, 2018 | by Sunit Nandi

The Steps in Business Growth Ladder You Shouldn’t Miss

Growing a business is a lot of work and takes careful planning. In many cases, it can be overwhelming, and businesses that grow too quickly without a solid plan may end up shrinking in the end as the new demands become too much for them to handle. In fact, only one-third of all businesses survive 10 years or more, with many failings during their growth phases. The good news is that by following the steps of a business growth ladder you can make sure your business grows in a healthy way and produces more revenue than ever before.

Conceptualization

Growing your business shares many things in common with starting a business, and you may find yourself repeating tasks that you performed during the early days. One example is conceptualization. There is much more to grow your business than just deciding you want to make more money. Take the time to think up an actionable concept of how you want your business to grow, complete with goals, and micro-plans to help you reach those goals. This will be your blueprint for business growth.

Delegation and Strategic Planning

Once you have a blueprint for how you want your business to grow, you need to begin assigning roles. This may involve moving around current employees, hiring new employees, or even taking on new roles yourself if you have to. The most important thing in revenue generation plan is to make sure you have all the necessary roles filled by personnel capable of performing the required tasks. Assigning someone to a role they’re not qualified for can be disastrous, so take special care on this step.

Web Design with Integrated Gateway Payment

If you’re like most businesses, you already have an online presence of some sort. However, you could also be making the mistake of limiting your customer’s payment options and limiting your revenue as a result. A common step in growing your business is expanding the ways you can get paid. You need to allow a variety of ways to allow your customers to make payments, including fee financing options which allow payments to be made in instalments.

Customer Support

As you probably know, customer support can make or break your business unless you have a virtual monopoly in your area. Even so, building up trust and goodwill among your customers almost always translates into greater revenue generation. The trick is being able to balance what you’re spending on customer support, with the increased revenue so that it’s actually profitable for you. As you grow, so will your customer service demands so be prepared to hire new customer service personnel, and possibly reorganize your customer service division entirely.

Finance Management

Finding new ways to manage your finances is also important when growing your business. A small business that suddenly becomes a mid-sized business will quickly realize that their current financial management strategies and plans are insufficient to deal with their transition. As with the previous step on the ladder, this can be easily dealt with by allowing third-party services such as invoice discounting services, freeing you up to focus on other parts of your business. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, you can find invoice discounting explained in greater detail here.

Marketing and Branding

When growing your business, you will inevitably push into new markets, whether by design or by accident. This being the case, you need to reevaluate your marketing strategies, particularly your branding since your branding is very closely related to your target demographic. It is also important to note that new markets may need to be marketed to in new ways. What works in one market, may not work in another after all.

Data and Analytics

Tracking your data and analytics is a crucial component of running any business but becomes even more important when your business is in a period of growth. It can be very easy to mistake growth for success and ignore unfavourable metrics. A good example of this would be a business that’s experiencing rapidly increasing revenue generation, but also a significant increase in customer complaints as their customer service department fails to meet the growing demands of their business. Keep an eye on your metrics and address any problems that arise as a result of your growth before they begin having a negative impact on your growth.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing is becoming more popular than ever these days as the Internet allows businesses to grow faster than ever. This is due to the fact that through the power of the Internet, you can outsource tasks that would have to have been done “in house” decades ago. If you’re new to outsourcing, it may feel uncomfortable at first, and you may be concerned that you have less oversight over your workers. However, the benefits can’t be denied, and outsourcing is the fastest and easiest way to support your business as it grows.

Image Source: Piratica.in

Reaching New Demographics

One common step on the growth ladder is when a business decides to begin offering new services and products in order to reach out to new demographics. While this may be seen as a departure from what you’re accustomed to, it can be a great way to bring in new sources of revenue and fuel the growth of your business. Just make sure you take the time to do proper market research or you could end up wasting a lot of capital on fruitless pursuits.

Reinvestment

The final step of the business growth ladder could also be viewed as a stepping stone right back to the first step. By reinvesting the profits from your business back into your business, you’re able to turn the business growth ladder into more of a loop and continue the growth cycle. The key is to use the other steps of the ladder to determine where your capital would be best spent for maximum effect.

Don’t Fear Growth, But Don’t Take It Lightly Either

A period of growth can be a time of uncertainty for a business owner. You may feel excited to see your business becoming more successful, but you may also be overwhelmed as your business begins to take on more needs and require more resources to run properly. By following the business growth ladder, you can take the steps necessary to grow your business without fear of running it into the ground.

Tags: business, growth, ladder, should not miss, steps

About the Author

Sunit Nandi I'm the leader of Techno FAQ. Also an engineering college student with immense interest in science and technology. Other interests include literature, coin collecting, gardening and photography. Always wish to live life like there's no tomorrow.