Is your business ready to expand? Read our ultimate guide to growing a business!
Knowing when to expand your small business takes patience, a clear head, and a plan. The fact is you’re going to want to know exactly how you plan on upscaling your operations long before you actually can upscale.
Thanks to the power of social media, it is possible to suddenly start trending. Once you trend, you can expect a massive influx in sales and interest. By having a plan in place ahead of time, you can swiftly start expanding operations to meet the demand.
Guide to growing a business
Of course, expanding isn’t just about being able to fulfill orders. You will need to be proactive about it, too. How do you get started? While each business will have its own journey, this guide to growing a business will help you learn just what you need to structure your expansion plans:
Understand What You Need for Growth
Every business needs three things to successfully grow. The first is support. The second is funding. The third is interest. The fact is, however, that you can and should be pushing for those three invaluable assets from day one.
Yes, you can use social media and try to connect to your customers manually, but this takes time and is small time. For example, a small-batch fashion designer could theoretically work on becoming a hit online. Many have done it! It is not, however, the only option.
You could also make partnerships or collaborate with boutiques and concept stores to get your product in the hands of their customers. You can work to get out there on small catwalks during Fashion Week. You can also work on getting your brand mentioned by relevant publications, and more.
Other businesses will need capital and an environment that supports Research and Development. In both instances, you need to know where you want to be. If startup capital is critical for you, for example, then you’ll want to head to a city like San Francisco or London. If R&D support is key, a city like Dublin with its 25% R&D tax credit might be a better choice.
Plan Out How to Respond to Surge Demands
The other key way for growing a business is by experiencing a sudden surge in demand. Most small businesses are going to outright falter at this stage, because they don’t have a plan to quickly uptick production or shipping.
That’s why choosing suppliers that work with increasing demands is important. This way, you can add or subtract how much you order per batch based on your demand.
You can also use data to predict surge demands. At the start, this is simply going to be done by using sales periods to estimate sales. You could expect an increase in sales, for example, near Christmas, and a drop-off in January. The longer you continue, the more you can use your own data to predict the ebb and flow of demand.
Steps for growing a business on a budget
One thing that’s true across the board – expanding costs money. The hope is that you bring in more money than you pay, but that’s not actually a guarantee.
The good news is that there are several ways that you can save while expanding – particularly if you are pushing an expansion plan, rather than responding to a surge in demand.
· Opt for a Virtual Office
Opening up an office is one of the first ways that most small and upstart businesses expand. While this is a good move if you need more space, there is the problem of rent. For example, a fashion brand could thrive in East London, but the rents are significantly higher than anywhere else in the UK.
The good news is there is a hybrid approach you can opt for in this situation. Instead of paying rent on a physical space in London, you can rent somewhere far more affordable (and potentially closer) to you to operate out of.
Then you can rent a virtual office through Your City Office. This means you can benefit from having a business address and a 24/7 call answering service in London. You can even book a meeting room at the office you are renting on an ad hoc business.
This way, you can have somewhere physical to set up shop and work for the day when you’re running around making connections. You can even bring potential business partners into your own office and wow them with your location.
· Create a Full Costings for Your Expansion Options
One of the reasons why expanding ends up costing so much is because you try to expand reactively, or instinctively. Neither option allows you to comfortably compare your options, negotiate with vendors, or just generally understand how much it will cost to expand.
That’s why going through and finding new suppliers, new shipping and fulfillment options, and the like ahead of time and putting together a costings and financial report for yourself is so important. One, it will help you walk into your expansion plan with eyes wide open, and two, it will gives you the time and space to find the best option for your budget and needs.
· Create — and Regularly Update — Your Business Plan
A good business plan (or several) is worth its weight in gold. Not only will it outline how you plan to expand, but it can include contingency plans. This alone can help you stay on track and take you through a successful expansion all on your own. However, if you need investment to take off, this is your secret weapon.
Your business plan needs to explain everything to an investor, and, as a result, to you. You never want to go into an expansion process blind. A US-based company might think that you’ll succeed if you expand into Europe or Asia, for example, but without the market research you don’t actually know if the demand is there.
You also won’t understand what it takes to succeed in those markets just by saying you’ll do it.
By creating a business plan, you go through the steps of understanding these markets better, increasing your chances of successfully going international. You can also use that plan to bring in new investments, making it a win-win.
Summary
By following the steps and strategies above, you will be well on the way to growing a business successfully!
