There may come a time when you realize that your company isn’t growing as quickly as it should be. Maybe your business’s rate of growth is slowing down to the point that you’re worried your growth may plateau. Or, maybe you’re anxious to keep up with—and surpass—your competitors. And still, you may want to speed up growth in order to meet predetermined deadlines for accomplishing specific business goals.
Fortunately, there are many strategies you can use in 2019 to start accelerating your business growth, and achieve the vision you have for your company.
9 Ways to Accelerate Your Business Growth in 2019
- Streamline Your Operations If you’re really ready to speed things up, there’s never a better time to remove the complexity and dead weight from your operations. Faster growth means more employees, additional departments, a thousand more day-to-day operations to consider, etc. Make it easier for yourself and your employees, and prepare your company for accelerated growth by removing the clutter from your business operations. This can mean analyzing each individual task completed throughout the day, and determine whether it’s being performed as quickly and efficiently as it could be, and whether it truly ends up benefiting your company holistically. Or, it could mean reducing the amount of time and capital your business spends on tasks that you’re able to automate, and make the switch to automated payroll and bookkeeping services. Consider where you can make adjustments to make room for all the great new things that come with rapid business growth, and where you can remove growth blockers in order to speed up your day to day operations.
- Expand List of Products or Services Offered—Slowly Adding products and services to your company’s list of capabilities is one of the best, sure-fire ways of expanding your customer base, and speeding up your business’s rate of growth. But be warned—introducing a single new product comes with days to months of preparation. Is your sales team prepared with the knowledge they need to sell your new product to customers? Is your warehouse equipped to handle the logistics? Have you really met the best vendor with the best price and quality of materials or supplies you need? Does your marketing department have the email campaigns, pop-ups, landing pages and social media posts ready to promote your new product to the world? Don’t release all the products and services you want to send out at once. Give your employees time to properly understand and prepare for the new product or service offered, and your customers enough time to decide whether they really like it or not! Seeing how your customers react to one or two new products or services offered—slowly—will give you a better picture as to how well you can expect your next product release will sell, and give you time to make any adjustments necessary. Continuously releasing new products once every few months, or even once a year can instill a sense of excitement in customers that follow or discover your brand, who will look forward to your next big release.
- Update or Replace Your Equipment There’s no way around it—when you’re accelerating your business growth, you need to equip your business with the upgraded features you need to make it happen. This could mean upgrading your credit processing system with cutting-edge POS technology that processes payments faster, giving your employees more time to service more customers. Or, it could mean installing new office computers, furniture for additional employees and/or customers, heavy equipment that helps you complete projects faster, or other machinery that helps you provide the new products or services you plan on releasing. Whatever the case may be, if your business isn’t growing fast enough, then there’s never a better time to give your company the tools it needs to make your dreams a reality. If you don’t have the working capital to fund equipment yourself, there are lower-cost equipment financing options available that can help you pay off equipment purchases in small installments, instead of paying up front. In fact, paying up-front may stunt your business growth instead of helping to accelerate it, as you could lose the working capital needed to take on additional business opportunities.
- Start a Customer Loyalty Program Statistics show that it’s nearly 3 times more expensive to attract new customers than to keep old customers moving back, when taking all the marketing efforts required to do so. Fortunately, customer loyalty programs drastically reduce this number. This is one of the easiest—and cheapest—ways to attract new customers, and keep loyal ones coming back for more. Something as simple as a loyalty punch card that offers “every fifth purchase free” or “25% off your 10th purchase” can be enough to convert customers loyal to your competitors, and keep your long-term customers coming back more frequently. Don’t just hand out these cards to each customer at the register—make posters with the customer’s opportunity to save at your business in your windows, and advertise it online via email and direct mailers. Make it known how much loyal customers can save by using your business over others, and watch your sales skyrocket.
- Expand Your Target Market By now, you already know your target market, and the best ways to engage with them effectively and emotionally. You know the problems that you can help them fix, or the opportunities to better their lives that you can help them grasp. However, accelerating the growth of your business also means enticing key demographics and markets that you or your competitors are yet to tap into. What new types of customers will you be attracting with the new products or services your business will offer? Will your rapidly-growing business scale to the point where you can extend your reach to target markets that were previously out of reach? If you don’t think there’s an additional customer base in existence that would benefit from what your business provides, then that mindset alone might be the root cause of the issue holding your company back from growing faster. Reaching new types of customers may require some research on behalf of you and your team, and some outside-the-box thinking, but in the end, the speed that your business will grow as a result of entirely new streams of revenue will make it well worth the effort.
- Improve Your SEO In 2019, your business’s SEO (search engine optimization) is more important than any other factor regarding your visibility, brand recognition, and reputation. More and more, consumers will look up your company’s reviews, website, and list of products—as well as how your business stacks up against your competitors—before even considering visiting your building. Give your SEO a boost by focusing on the keywords you want to rank for above your competitors, when consumers enter a search term on Google. Be the first construction business to show up when consumers search for “roof repair services near me,” or “window cleaning and repair.” It takes a long time to boost your SEO, but the more effort you put into it, the more you’ll be able to reach audiences on local and global scales long-term—and speed up the growth of your business as a result.
- Cut Costs When your business in a rapid state of growth, it’s important to place a heavy focus on heavy costs, so you have an easier time budgeting for all the advancements your business will be making in the near future. However, as the owner of a growing business, you’re likely running back and forth between a million new tasks, and it’s easy to forget about the smaller costs you’ve grown so used to paying. If this scenario sounds familiar, it’s time to set aside some time to re-evaluate the relationships. Consider how much you’re paying for all your overhead expenses through your vendors and service providers, and whether continuing your relationship with them is worth the cost. How much are you paying for utilities, equipment, business insurance, employee benefits, business communications, etc.? Exploring your options for less costly and higher-quality alternatives is crucial to accelerating your growth, as you’ll quickly be able to use the funds you’ll save by switching towards new projects and advancements for your business. Simply switching to a lower-cost utility service provider, business insurance package, or business phone service can save you thousands each year.
- Expect the Unexpected When you’re talking about quick business growth, the only thing that you can truly expect to happen is the unexpected—and more frequently than you’d think. Not every growth venture will go your way. Challenges will arise that you could not possibly see coming—but must be prepared with the means to resolve them immediately, or risk stunting your growth. On the other hand, unexpected opportunities to grow in leaps and bounds might arise, and you absolutely need to be prepared for when they do, or risk losing once-or-twice-in-a-lifetime chances to grow. In these circumstances, Expert Financing Advisors recommend equipping your business with a revolving business line of credit. Giving you immediate access to cash on-hand, a business credit line will ensure that your growing business always has the means to immediately act on solving any challenge, or grasp any opportunity—without the risk of overpaying. Because with revolving credit lines, you only have to pay for the amount you withdraw at a time. This can be extremely effective in helping to accelerate the growth of your business, as it allows you to take immediate funding action while letting you keep the working capital you need to grow flowing smoothly, without cash-flow disruptions. Let’s say you borrow a $300,000 credit line. You’re growing rapidly, when all of a sudden your ceiling collapses, and fixing it will set you back $100,000. Instead of paying up front out-of-pocket or via business expenses, you can withdraw $100,000 from your credit line, and pay back the funds you owe over time. And with revolving terms, you can replace any funds you withdrew back into your credit line, where it will become available once again for you to use towards growing your business. You will not be obligated to use any unused funds, and will always remain available for you to use.
- Build Your Culture—Business Growth Will Follow The culture of your business translates into everything you do—the way you treat your clients, the quality and characteristics of your employees, the tone and message of each and every marketing campaign, and how fast your company grows. Do you have a strong company culture, built around your business’s core mission, vision and values? If you don’t, there’s never been a better time to start than the present. Building a strong culture will result in:
- More competent employees that align with your business goals
- Greater customer service and relationships
- Increased brand recognition (show the world how unique your business’s personality is!)
- Unify all levels of your staff from all new departments under common values and goals
- A more positive, and therefore more productive work environment
The list goes on. The bottom line: the more work you put into building your culture, the more quickly and efficiently your business will operate as a whole, and the faster your company will grow.
Need Help Speeding Up Your Business Growth This Year?
The economy is rocking in 2019. If you’ve had plans to speed up your business growth, but don’t have the funds or resources to make it happen, now has never been a better time.
The vast variety of small business loans available this year are now offering greater terms, lower rates and larger amounts than in recent years, for business owners of all sizes, with any credit score, and from virtually every industry.
And now, there’s also a new variety of business services now available to business owners that help boost sales, lower costs, streamline operations, and reduce risk—4 keys to unlocking your business’s true growth potential.
Access Everything Your Business Needs to Grow, All in One Place
And now, you no longer have to search from lender to lender, and between a thousand different service providers to find the best growth resource for you.
National Business Capital, a company dedicated to “We Finance Your Growth™,” now offers both world-class business financing, and acclaimed business services hand-picked and vetted personally by Kevin Harrington—industry innovator, and original “Shark” from ABC’s Shark Tank.
Get started accelerating your growth today with help from a trusted Expert Advisor by calling (877) 482-3008 for a free growth consultation. Or, apply for financing today by filling out this simple 60-second application online, and get the funds you need to grow in as little as 24 hours.
Additionally, you can sign up for National’s business services today by giving our services division a call at (800) 960-9363, and pair with one of our Expert Advisors to discuss how we can speed up your rate of growth as quickly and conveniently as possible.