An unexpected growth in sales is a positive development for a company. It also may be difficult to manage with the current supply chain issues as well as for businesses that:
- Are in the startup phase
- Lack experienced management
- Lack funding
If you want to follow a business expansion strategy that focuses on speed, it would benefit you to follow company growth strategies that:
- Align with your goals
- Remain manageable
- Offer the biggest chance of success
We’re going to discuss a few strategies that can be implemented when learning how to manage rapid business growth.
6 Things to Consider When Focusing on Fast Business Growth
1. Outline Your Ideal Customer
Growth is possible if you target your ideal customer. Spending money on targeting the wrong customer will cost you time and money.
Rapid growth strategies demand that you research your ideal customer and focus your efforts on selling to them. Without knowing this one important thing, you’ll have a difficult time moving through the remaining steps.
2. Identify Your USP
What makes your product or service stand out from the competition? If you don’t differentiate yourself from competitors, rapid growth is going to be impossible. Instead, you want to create a unique selling point or unique sales proposition.
To give you a clear example of a USP, we’ll use the popular investing app Robinhood. When Robinhood came to market, the message was simple; investing with as little as $1 from your smartphone. This, along with $0 commission fees, was what set Robinhood apart from their predecessors.
You can create your unique selling proposition by answering a series of questions:
- What makes your business different from others?
- What value do you bring to consumers that other businesses do not?
- What do you do better than anyone else?
If you can’t answer these questions, you’ll have a very difficult time developing a sales pitch that sells.
3. Finalize the KPIs You Want to Target
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are talked about a lot in business, and they’re something you’ll also want to focus on when following a growth strategy. KPIs will allow you to:
- Track your business’s progress
- Report progress
KPIs are indicators that your strategy is going as planned, so they may include total sales volume, month-over-month growth and other data.
For an e-commerce business, common KPIs can include conversion rates, cost per new customer, and clickthrough rate.
4. Identify New Revenue Sources
What happens when you’ve penetrated a market and have saturated it? You’ll need to:
- Find a new market, or
- New revenue sources
Local markets will have their own pain points, and this is something you need to consider, too. Your team should spend time identifying new offerings that may be part of your current or future growth.
5. Stay Compliant
The growth mindset is fast-paced, and it’s very easy for a business to “cut corners” during growth, but these oversights can have major consequences. It’s crucial that you work with professionals that focus on remaining compliant.
You’ll have a lot of compliance areas to focus on here, including:
- Intellectual property
- Hiring employees
- Contracts
- Taxation
- Licensing
- Etc.
Nothing can impact a rapid growth strategy quite like legal issues due to compliance oversights. Working with professionals who provide complete compliance oversight is a smart choice for businesses because it allows them to focus on core operational tasks instead of time-consuming compliance issues.
6. Work with Outsourcing Professionals
Growth requires that you keep up with demand. If you can’t meet the demand of consumers, growth strategies may cause more harm than good for your business. Outsourcing professionals will allow you to:
- Offload some tasks to a third-party
- Scale your business for growth
- Meet the demand of consumers
And if you work with the right outsourcing company, they’ll have managers and employees in place that can help you fill skill demands that may be holding your business back.
Focusing on growth for business is a common business strategy, and you can avoid a lot of issues along the way if you create a plan. Hire managers who have experience with fast business growth, or work with consultants who can fill in experience gaps that you may have. For more content related to business growth, click here.