There are many reasons why small and medium-sized businesses succeed. If you’re running a business and need some help with getting your business to its peak level, we can help.
Many small businesses struggle with growth because they lack certain key things. As a result, they end up not growing as they should. The reality is this: as long as you’re solving problems, your business can truly become wildly successful. If you need a few ideas that will put you on a fast track to success, the tips here will work for you.
- Prioritize the Customer
Unless you’ve been living on Mars, chances are you’ve probably heard of Amazon. This wildly successful online retailer has been able to achieve this phenomenal success because of two words: customer obsession.
Jeff Bezos’ maniacal focus on customers is why Amazon is beating established retailers at their game –a game that many of them including Walmart have been playing for at least 50 years.
If you want to replicate that kind of success, then you need to pay attention to what your customers like, how they like it, and what you can do to make their lives easier.
You probably don’t think about it a lot, but our lives are much better because of Amazon and Bezos’ unrelenting pursuit of optimal customer satisfaction. You should also do the same. Become obsessed with your customers and do everything you can to make them happy.
- Invest in Marketing
One of the biggest problems that small businesses have is thinking of marketing as an unnecessary expense when they should be thinking of it as an investment. With a good marketing campaign, you can grow your business a thousandfold within a short time.
Why? Because great marketing gets you tons of exposure. The more exposure your business or brand has, the higher your chances of becoming successful. But first, you have to make sure that your business is seen and experienced by as many people as possible.
The only way to do this is by promoting and marketing your business. However, make sure that your promotions are done on channels or platforms that are best suited to your business. For example, small businesses get better returns if they advertise on paid search platforms like Google and Facebook than on billboards.
- Teach and Encourage Good Organizational Culture
Great work culture is not only good for business, but it’s also good for employee morale and a more efficient process. You should work on developing a culture that permeates everything the company does. As a rule, make sure that the culture is pretty simple and easy to understand.
If you do this right, you will lay the foundation for incredible success and a bright future. More importantly, it’ll give everyone in a company a sense of purpose, and a way of being, so that come what may, they’ll do okay.
- Outsource Mundane Business Activities
One of the most difficult things about running a small business is that you often have to wear multiple hats over the course of the day. This often results in many small business owners spending a lot of time on mundane or repetitive tasks that are time-consuming.
This means that many small business owners end up working in the business instead of working on it. The best thing that you need to do, therefore, is identify those vital tasks that are repetitive, and see if you can pay someone else to handle them or deploy software to take care of them.
- Encourage Consistent Learning
Every successful business owner knows and understands that learning is crucial to growth. So, they invest in either building out their own learning management system or hire trainers to frequently train staff and upgrade their knowledge. You should do the same too.
This is particularly important in this knowledge economy, where what you know and how you use that knowledge almost always gives you a solid edge over others. So, encourage staff to consistently upgrade their knowledge.
Provide incentives for this purpose too. Many businesses do this for their employees, with some offering up to $5,000 a year in learning expenses for each member of staff.
In fact, many fortune 1,000 companies tend to offer their employees part or full sponsorship for MBAs. That’s how invested they are in knowledge acquisition. While you may not be able to afford as much yet, just find a way to do what you can.
- Improve Product and Service Quality
Every successful business owner understands the importance of upgrading their products and services so that customers and clients are better satisfied. This is where your creativity and customer needs anticipation becomes very vital.
Not only do you need to make sure that your products and services are good, you also should make sure that they can be improved in any way possible. You have to “grow” with your customers by anticipating their needs and providing them before they even know they need them.
The late Steve Jobs once said, “most people don’t know what they want until you show it to them”. As you can see, it’s paid off for Apple. You need to continuously work on improving your products and services so that your customers’ needs are always met.
- Consistently Evaluate Your Business Processes
If your business processes are the same as they were 3-5 years ago, then you’re basically shooting yourself in the foot. This is because processes that were relevant years ago, may not be relevant today –even if the products or services are just as valuable.
For example, if you were only using certain marketing channels 3 years ago, chances are you would be leaving a lot of money on the table by just sticking to those channels. Why? Because there are new, more powerful channels coming out every day.
For example, Tiktok was non-existent 3 years ago. But now, it’s taken over the world and has become an incredibly powerful marketing channel for people who know how to use the platform. So, keep an eye out for new technologies and tools that can help your business run a bit smoother and faster.
