Five ways to plan for growth in 2019
Most business owners undoubtedly will say that they are focused on business growth. However, far too often a cohesive and executable plan has not been completed to achieve this growth. If they do have a plan, it’s usually far too vague and doesn’t really get off the ground.
Multiple factors in today’s marked undoubtedly impede business growth, namely the increasing costs of materials and resources, rising fixed costs (such as rent, power and fuel), and complicated government regulations. Not to mention a lack of skilled labour, competition within the market space, and the changing landscape introduced by e-commerce.
So how can you help your business grow and expand?
1. Have an executional plan
Successful businesses have plans in place with realistic and achievable goals, which they believe they can achieve with a bit of hard work. A good starting place is working on a 12-month plan. Breaking this annual plan down into more manageable quarterly, monthly and weekly goals will help keep everyone on track.
2. Work on your goals
The best laid plans come to nothing if they are not constantly reassessed and revised, based on the accumulation of your results. Working on your goals means that you need to set specific time aside, daily, weekly, monthly to analyse your business data and review your progress towards your goals. If you make sure that you achieve your weekly, monthly and quarterly goals in a timely manner, you can be assured of achieving your annual goals as well.
3. Be customer focused
The most successful businesses understand their customer’s likes and dislikes, and know how to give them what they need. For example, you might provide the most innovative building techniques to your customers, but do they know why they need them? Thinking as a customer will allow you to focus your business on fulfilling your customer’s greatest needs, and you can do this by talking to your customers, asking for feedback and being true to your word.
4. Chase customers
To increase your customer base, you need to understand your customers and meet them in their backyard. This directly feeds into the explosion of e-commerce sites on the internet. Bricks and mortar businesses have realised that to stimulate their own growth, they need to go where their customers go and offer their products in this online space. Creating an online component to your business may sound difficult at first, but it can provide a much needed boost to your revenue, and there is plenty of help available to achieve this expansion.
5. Take calculated risks
The most successful businesses often try something that is so far outside their comfort zone, they are amazed when it actually works! As long as your risks will not irreparably impact your business, it’s often worth thinking outside the box to achieve your goals. On the other hand, the wrong type of risks can devastate a business, and one of these risks is not having adequate insurance for your business.
To set yourself up for success you’ll need to find the right insurance to cover all of your business needs. Let one of our Lewis Insurance Services advisers guide you to growing your business even further in 2019.
Lewis Insurance Services is here to help our clients with advice on your insurance needs. To discuss further, please contact Lewis Insurance Services on 07 3217 9015 or send us an email by clicking here.
This article was published by our AFSL Licensee, Insurance Advisernet Australia P/L (07/05/2019)
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This information and any accompanying material does not consider your personal circumstances as it is of a general nature only. You should not act on the information provided without first obtaining professional financial advice specific to your circumstances and considering the Product Disclosure Statement.