After getting your business off and running, the next step is to take care of it and make it flourish.
Here are a few factors to put into consideration to help manage and grow your business.
Marketing
Now that your business is off and running, your marketing goals will relate to increasing sales, building demand for specific products and/or services, increasing awareness among specific target markets, and maintaining customer loyalty. See a free marketing plan template here
Money
You need money to grow – after all, you need to sustain the business, get or service machines/tools, pay bills and create more products, before the business starts yielding profit. Angel investors, friends and family, and venture capitalists can be of great help at this time.
Management
The biggest problem in growth, especially when you’re small, is that you’ve done things a certain way that works for a smaller-scale company. As the business grows, you will have to hire and delegate tasks. You need to have a system and a process for it.
Mentoring
You need somebody who’s giving you some wisdom along the way. There are all kinds of issues around navigating as an entrepreneur that you don’t know. It’s having somebody who’s been there before to say, Hey, yeah, I remember that, and here’s what we did for it.
Partnerships
As you grow, you find out the limits of what you and the company can handle.
When you realize there are other capabilities that you need, you might come up with the solution in-house or hire more people.
You might also consider employing the expertise of other like-minded businesses, whose services/products compliments yours. For instance, if you sell products, you may employ the services of a logistics company to handle the delivery of your products to your customers.
