First, congratulations to all who are about to embark on a journey as a business owner. Welcome to the world of entrepreneurship. Before you set the wheels in motion, learn about the growth stages that your business will experience, the challenges they face, and the best ways to overcome them.
It’s clear that you have already felt overwhelmed by the overwhelming emotions associated with starting a business. It’s not surprising that you feel emotions such as excitement, wonder, stress, anxiety, and anticipation. It’s just the first step in starting your own business. After taking the first step, you now need to focus on maximising your potential profitability and ensuring that growth occurs.
Businesses strive for growth because it opens up new opportunities, experiences, and further development. However, if you don’t know the risks and have no plans to overcome them, the effect can be devastating.
These are the growth challenges that your new business will face. It’s important to plan and prepare for them all.
The business proposal
What is your business idea? Do you have a market need that is unmet? Perhaps you want to expand your market share by offering a more lucrative product. No matter your goal, the first step is to create a business plan. Let’s not overegg the pudding. Instead, let us prepare for the essential business plan that will create a strong business foundation.
The business plan will detail the practicalities of your business idea. This will help you determine whether it is viable without having to start the business. This plan will be useful for any financial requests, such as bank loans. Your business plan would be beneficial to any personal contacts who are financing the business. Do you plan to finance the business? You would, without doubt, want to know how you plan to return your investment with a well-crafted business plan. Here’s what a typical business plan should include:
- Your business’s key idea. This should include details about the industry you are entering, the trade patterns and structure you expect, the products you offer to the market, and your goals.
- Segment your market and then target. This information should also include marketing information. Therefore, early market research is a good idea. Information on your target market can be gathered from both primary and secondary sources. It includes information such as demographic, lifestyle, and geographic information, along with details about how you plan to reach your goal market.
- Enterprise management program. How will you manage the daily running of your business? What stage do you plan to start recruiting employees? And what roles are you planning on creating? Are you realistic in your current arrangements without putting yourself at risk of burnout?
- Finance management and investment. This section should include information about the financial contribution required, including how much capital is needed. Return forecasting and projections are also included. This should be based on factual and realistic predictions, not optimistic projections.
With your business plan now in place, it is time to move onto the exciting stage.
Startup and setup
This is your first chance to start developing your physical business and make your business plan a reality. As a startup, the first thing you’ll learn is how to adapt to your customers’ buying habits and get feedback. While managing a business that doesn’t make a profit, this is what you’ll be learning. Startup difficulties can be eased by a variety of things:
- People: You can ask for support from your family and friends. It can be helpful to have new employees who are focused and enthusiastic about the business. The business culture will be shaped largely by your employees. They should be able to develop with the company, so make sure you hire people who are able to last.
- You want a comfortable, functional, and affordable space. The functionality of your business will determine how it is set up. However, location, size, and whether you buy or lease are important factors in choosing the right business premises. You must also consider your expected growth. As a startup, you don’t want any obstacles to your efforts.
The square footage is always more expensive so it’s important to consider the possibility of purchasing a larger property. A mezzanine floor can be installed to provide additional office, retail, or storage space if there is enough height. This will allow you to drive growth and ensure that you have the right provisions in place.
- Building supplier relationships: Suppliers will be just like interested in you as you are, so get started building your network immediately. This will allow you to obtain the goods, services, or raw materials that you require at competitive prices. Good relationships will also help to strengthen your position when external factors, such as current supply chain issues, become a hindrance.
Your business now has a strong customer base, great supplier relationships, and great employees. It’s time for you to continue the journey to the next lucrative stage.
Stimulation of growth
Although you may have reached the startup stage, your business is still in its infancy and depends on induced growth. These are some ideas to help you generate growth.
- Analyze competitors’ activity to develop tactical strategies to beat them.
- Choose the areas with a greater potential for profit.
- Concentrate on areas that can be improved.
- Implement a customer/client retention scheme.
- Look for more opportunities.
- Use new marketing strategies.
Your new business should be treated as a company that depends on you to provide the necessary resources for growth and success. Your business will grow stronger and more trustworthy if you are able to meet its growing needs now.
Scaling-up
Your company has reached one of its most important moments. It has demonstrated stability, success and prosperity, which gives it the opportunity to grow. Expanding your business can open up new opportunities to increase profit and allow you to compete against larger companies. But expansion requires significant initial investment. There are also risks associated with poor expansion routes. To ensure that your expansion plans work, you need to evaluate all options. These could include:
- You can also enter other areas.
- The introduction/development of new products/services.
- Mergers and acquisitions of enterprises
- Marketing is a significant investment.
It is worth noting, however, that while there are opportunities to expand, some entrepreneurs choose to keep the business as it exists. This is often due to the reluctance of some entrepreneurs to take on the risk of expanding, especially when current profitability levels are high. You should also consider that expanding competitors could, if they are successful, take the market leader.
The mature enterprise
Your business is now mature and stable. It has established itself as an established, well-respected enterprise. Your products and services are now at their highest point. Sales have also reached this peak. Now, your objective is to continue improving and achieving continuous performance. Despite the fact that your business has reached its final stage, there is still the possibility of sales falling. This can be due to new market entry, shifts in target markets and supplier variations.
Even though the pace of activities will be slower than in previous stages, it is important to maintain a stable business position, sales, and customer base.
- Grab every opportunity to expand your target market.
- Continually promoting and advertising to keep you on the customer’s radar
- Good relationships with suppliers
