So, you’ve started your small business, invested resources, made sales and hit the ceiling. Now all you can wonder is how to take your small business to the next level and attain its full potential.
It’s true that every dream of establishing a small business is always followed by making it bigger but only a few entrepreneurs are able to make it true. You can read a lot about various ways that can help you scale your business and make it big. But when it comes to a successful growth strategy, you only want to follow the ways that are proven to bring in successful results. Here I have compiled the five proven ways that can be your principle growth strategy for scaling your small business and turning into a big one. These have been tried, tested and approved by many businesses and will be a boon for your business if followed with some investment and planning. Have a look.
MERGE: Form An Alliance
One of the best ways to turn your small business into a big one is by merging with other company in your niche. There are many other companies in the market that share the same interest as you and would readily form an alliance in order to upturn their business. You don’t need much capital to form an alliance if you start cross-promoting each other’s products and services. This way you would get their business location, their products as well as their staff to take your business a step ahead in the game.
DELEGATE: Find Reliable Resources
Entrepreneurship is all about multitasking but it’s not necessary to wear many hats at the same time. You don’t have to play all the key roles yourself like marketing, operations, accounting, human resources, logistics etc. What you actually need is to delegate your work to other reliable resources and focus on making better business decisions for further growth. You might find it hard hand over your startup and its control, but in order to scale your business, you would need experienced persons with expertise in the particular niche. You can focus your attention and energy on growing the business while your reliable resources would use their expertise to make improve your business in that area.
DIVERSIFY: Give Variety To Customers
Cut through all the limits you’ve set for your small business by diversifying the products or services you provide. Once you’ve established your small business and the customers have started trusting your product or services, it’s time you start giving more variety to your customers. Bringing variety in the products and services would not only open new revenue channels but also tap many untapped sources of traffic. This is a proven way to take your small business to the next level once you’ve established yourself in the market.
EXPAND: Increase Your Market Reach
After your small business has conquered the niche market and become the big fish in the pond, the next step to move towards the big business goal is to move towards new markets. Open up at new locations with a well-prepared business plan to increase your market reach. Don’t lose focus from the base and keep your bottom-line profits flowing in for steady growth while expanding your business to a new market. Conquer that market with exceptional products and services and then start looking for another market. Keep this chain of expansion, growing strong and your business will see a rapid growth.
FRANCHISE: Offer Business Opportunity
There are a number of small business success stories that are playing role models when it comes to making it big with franchising. You can get reliable franchisees from different geographical locations and get them to promote your business. This way you not only meet customer demands in longer distances but also expand your business without investing much capital. All you need is find people who are interested in your business idea and share the same zeal towards the niche as you do. Your key vision should be in focus all the time while you set your foot out to franchise and offer business opportunities to other people.
Merge, delegate, diversify, expand, franchise: these are the five quintessential ways to turn your small business into a big one. Don’t get overwhelmed by this list. You don’t have to follow all of them at once. Pick one or two, incorporate them in your start-up B2B model and once you see positive results, follow on with the rest. While there is no single approach to success, these proven growth strategies will take you closer to your goal.
P.S. - While following these steps, make sure that your company vision is the North Star guiding you from being a small business to expanding into a bigger one.
Author Bio:
Ankit Gupta heads the content marketing team at ExportersIndia.com, a leading buyers and sellers’ business marketplace in India. Owing to the passion for his profession, Ankit keeps researching and sharing his valuable insights with small businesses to enlighten them with new ways to scale their business. You can follow Ankit on his Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn Profiles to read other such insightful blogs.
