Every business seeks, in some way or another, business growth through time and expansion to improve its financial, economic and recognition situation in a market that becomes more competitive every day.

This growth is conditioned by many factors or elements that achieve this goal.

There is no magic formula to achieve the expansion of your business. It does not matter if you are a large or small company owner.

The dedication, desire and determination to meet this goal can help you achieve it.  

You often think that it is a very distant challenge to achieve and that your company is not in the best situation to do it, but it is not like that!  

Read on to learn all about business growth and how, little by little, it can help you fulfill the dream of expanding your business.

Business Growth: What Is It?

This concept generally relates to the evolution and development that businesses go through throughout time, such as ongoing improvement, increasing profitability, attaining goals, improved brand positioning, etc.

Normally, companies grow when they discover a greater demand than they can cover, and they need to broaden their horizons to reach those customers who demand the product or service.

Therefore, it resorts to investing in resources to cover this demand, such as infrastructure, machinery, and production.

What represents the first step to growth.

But business growth does not refer only to this. But it is also about improving your services, especially when it comes to customer service, and how is this achieved?

The training and constant teaching of employees will improve management and generate greater productivity and efficiency to expand your opportunities.

Certain indicators can show you if your company is growing:

• Need to hire more staff, because the one you have is no longer enough
• Greater recognition in the market
• An increase in the flow of customers and, therefore, sales
• Faster product rotation, that is, more is sold than before
• You see yourself in the scenario of having to create more attention channels because the ones you have are not enough
• Among others.

Sometimes no matter how small the change may be, it can reflect that you are facing a panorama of business growth, and you have not even noticed it.

How To Make A Growth Plan?

First, you have to know what exactly a growth plan is?

It is a document containing each of the company’s objectives and all those strategies that you plan to implement to meet them.

The objective is to establish a set of steps to follow that may be changed along the journey and tailored to the conditions that may arise or that in some way obstruct the goal’s achievement.

Let’s have a look at how to make an effective business growth plan.

1. Conduct A Thorough Analysis Of Your Business.

To start making your plan, you must identify each of the elements that are part of your company, including weaknesses, strengths, opportunities and threats that may arise.  

Customers, the market, and the competition – are all external factors that can influence or intervene in achieving objectives.

This way, you will be able to see exactly:

• Where do you need to improve?  
• Where is it weakest?
• What are the problems you face?  
• What is the strong point of the company?
• What opportunities do you have?

With this clear, you will have a starting point to start your growth plan by knowing where you want to go and not starting without a clear premise from the beginning.

2. Set A Budgets

The financial and economic issue is crucial at this stage, so you must establish what your company can really spend to achieve expansion or growth.

Being realistic is very important in this step since you must make sure you have all the necessary resources to achieve the objectives and goals you are setting.  

Include each expense that you think may arise.

Therefore, you’ll have a clear picture, or at least a close approximation, of whether you can take on this risk or whether you’ll need to seek outside funding to do so.

The idea is not to have to limit yourself by money; to grow, you need investment. Otherwise, you will always be postponing it.  

3. Marketing And Sales Actions

Now that you know what the objectives are and how much you need to achieve them, it is time to define several important points, such as:

• Which clients are the objectives directed to?  
• How will you publicize the new product or service?
• What type of advertising will you use?
• How are the market and the competition?
• How will you distribute it if you provide the shipping service?
• Can you include any other sales channel?

You can successfully answer any questions if you implement actions related to digital marketing in your growth plan.

When developing a website, keep everything to the point, including web hosting, web design, intuitiveness, loading speed, responsiveness, and so on.

Social networks are a great ally to achieving many of these objectives, so you must include them in the action plan for growth.

The goal is to reach as many people as possible and give you recognition.

4. Decide A Work Team

In the business growth plan, it is good to include the continuous improvement of your staff or work team.

This will be a crucial factor for them to grow together with your company.

If you are looking to grow, you cannot leave anyone out and having a prepared team focused on developing their skills and being more efficient will help you along the way.

In addition, they may then be able to guide new employees you need to hire due to growth.  

Likewise, it defines the processes and actions to improve them so that the management of your company is increasingly compelling.

You will achieve everything with the help of each one of them, that each one specializes in their area and generates better results for you.  

The 5 Stages Of Business Growth

Those who run businesses know that the path a small business must take to become a large one is filled with many challenges and opportunities.

Knowing the stages a growing business goes through will give you an edge in making smart decisions at each of these phases.

First Stage: Existence

This is where most companies start, the main priority at this stage is to sell the products or services offered to customers.

This stage is characterized by the fact that the founders or owners are the ones in charge of the entire operation of the business.

Second Stage: Survival

At this stage, the business is already considered viable, it has customers who generate income to keep the company afloat.

Now that the business is growing, the entrepreneur needs to start hiring staff and making strategic alliances, which are key to driving the growth of the company.

Third Stage: Business Success

In this stage of growth, the work of the owners is more of supervision, since now their functions must be more focused on strategic planning and not on micromanagement.

Fourth Stage: Takeoff

This stage is perhaps the most exciting!

If you decide to invest in growth in Stage 3, you want to keep up that pace of investment here, as your business will be entering a phase of rapid growth that you should be very cautious about.

Fifth Stage: Maturity

This is the final stage of the model, but a company’s journey never ends.

You should take advantage of many opportunities here.

The company enjoys stability and resources to maintain its consolidation in the market.

Foundations For A Successful Business Growth Strategy

The growth of a company must be constant.

Not because you have reached the goals in a certain period, you will lower your guard and let the sales be lost for another period.

We must constantly update and improve the goals that we set for ourselves. For this, we will show you what steps you should not neglect:

Focus: what do you want to do? Where do you want to go?

Here we refer to the vision and mission of the company.

Of course, in a growth strategy, the main thing is sales and generating income, but having a clear focus will help you align your efforts.

 

Culture: we must adapt to the current situation and change for the better.

For example, if we need to invest in new technologies to improve our processes, people must be willing to change positively.

 

Processes: they must improve as the company grows, producing more and improving your customer acquisition, sales, and loyalty processes.

 

Infrastructure: If we achieve growth in sales and, therefore, growth in our company, our organizational structure will automatically grow.

People: As we already mentioned, when a company grows, its list of collaborators increases, which it will need to ensure the quality of the processes.

However, successful growth will also depend on people’s commitment to the company.

What Does A Company Need To Grow?