The Best Ways to Support Your Business While it Grows

The time has come for businesses to return to focusing on growth and development, forcing many to go outside their comfort zone to find new ways to boost business. It’s important to plan for growth to ensure you don’t get caught unprepared. Follow these tips to ensure that your business grows steadily, without overtaxing your existing resources or losing loyal customers.

Focus on established revenue sources

It’s far easier to maintain established and loyal customers than to attract new ones. An easy way to encourage customer loyalty and capitalize on your established revenue sources is to run a referral or customer loyalty program. Your customer purchase history is a valuable source of information on what your customers want, need and will pay for.

Be adaptable

Agility is a critical element of every growing business. "By allowing yourself to adapt and change quickly, you're able to test different approaches to business and find out what works best," Christian Lanng, CEO and co-founder of Tradeshift told Business News Daily. "It allows you to fail, pick yourself back up and keep going."  Being adaptable and flexible might be the most important trait you adopt on your path to sustainable growth.

 Build a sales funnel

Sales funnels help you scale and grow your business quickly and easily by funneling each lead down a similar path to a similar sale. Many businesses use a sales funnel like a free-shipping offer or discount codes or sales, to motivate customers, and drive them toward the most important element of every business, revenue.

Utilize a customer management system

Manual tracking of data is difficult, making a customer management system important for businesses who want to achieve steady growth. Cloud or accounting software can streamline several of your more complex and expensive processes, eliminating human error and speeding up customer processes.

Focus on your customer experience

The customer experience starts when a customer finds you and never ends. It’s important that your customers have a great experience with your product, and also have a great experience with your company. Many companies are using useful elements like the USPS Shipping Calculator to provide their customers with more, up-front information about shipping costs and delivery dates.

Boost your customer service

Did you know that satisfied customers will share their experience with an average of 11 people in their social circle, while displeased customers will share with an average of 15? Customers love to feel special, and while your customer service practices should already be on-point, boosting your customer service experience is a great way to ensure customers are satisfied with your product and service. Happy customers will gladly tell their friends, family and coworkers about your product, creating new sales channels immediately at no cost at all!

Identify new opportunities

Take some time to research your demographics by taking a close look at things like your distribution channels and your competition. The internet is a fantastic way to open yourself up to new opportunities. Use it to carefully diversify into as many digital channels as you can reasonably manage, to ensure you are getting maximum market coverage both locally or nationally. You may also find that your product is in demand in foreign markets or emerging industries, possibilities you may not have considered before.  

Corporate social responsibility

How well you care for your employees is a huge indicator of how well you treat your customers. Invest in your staff by providing them with training or personal development, or implement something like a safety management system, to ensure employees are safe and secure in their work environment. The more you invest in staff, the better quality of staff will seek out your company!

Form strategic partnerships

Strategic partnerships with complementary companies can help you attract new customers and corner new markets. Ensure you work with a reputable and respectable company, with excellent business practices, as their actions will reflect back on you and your company. Don’t forget about creating partnerships with social media influencers, a great way to access new markets and get customer buy-in.

These strategies are proven to help businesses develop sustainable and steady growth, but don’t stop there!  Take these strategies to the next level by continuing to develop and focus on them as your business takes off, ensuring a forward thinking work culture and increased customer satisfaction.  

About Nick Rojas

Nick Rojas is a business consultant and journalist who lives in Chicago and his hometown Los Angeles with his wife. His work often discusses social media, marketing, and branding in regards to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).