Growth is something that every business wants to achieve – but there is no denying that some businesses do better than others. As the military lifestyle demands an increase in who you are as an individual, the business world demands an indicative increase in your company and the bottom line.
Where would you rather be: running a business that stagnates year after year, or a business whose profits increase by 30, 50 or even 100 percent? It is a safe bet that most business leaders will choose the latter whenever possible.
Such explosive growth does not happen by accident. You don’t want it to be. Growth-obsessed businesses go there and it can happen – and in this article, I show you how you can too.
Growth is something that every business wants to achieve – but there is no denying that some businesses … [+]
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1. Develop clear growth goals
Growth-obsessed businesses take goal-setting seriously. They dive deeper into their actual numbers to understand how much they are earning each month and how they are doing. Using that information, they set goals where they want to stay for a month, a quarter, or a year in the future.
These are not just empty, randomly selected targets. Growth leaders evaluate which strategies are working and which are not If they want to achieve that goal, they identify specific steps. While they may not always reach their desired goal, the simple fact of having a goal helps them to stay on track.
2. Restore existing customers
Many business owners focus their energy on trying to find new customers. In fact, growth-obsessed brands have the energy – if not more – to power their existing customers.
With brand new possibilities, sometimes you take total shots in the dark. With repeat customers, you are already engaged in a warm lead. It offers a much more efficient way to work with a much higher success rate.
3. Ask for a referral
Those same customers who are likely to buy from you again are also a good source of new customers. If someone has a positive experience with your brand, there is a good chance that they will recommend you to others in their circles who are having similar problems.
Of course, growth-immersed business opportunities aren’t leaving referrals. They will go out of their way to encourage customers to refer friends, family or business associates. For example, I know a landscaping company that offers customers Amazon 50 to Amazon 100 Amazon gift cards for each referral they do business with.
This may seem expensive, but for services that trade thousands of dollars per project, this is an incredibly cost-effective way to ensure an uninterrupted flow of warm leads.
4. Generate Passive Income
As a business leader, you only have many hours a day. Even if you have employees, you can assign some of your work, it can sometimes be difficult to get huge growth to enjoy larger businesses.
That’s why one of the smartest things you can do is find a way to generate passive income to complement the ongoing work for your clients. With passive revenue flow, you can increase your chances of earning without doubling your workload.
There are many ways you can generate passive income from ebooks and online courses where you share your knowledge to offer a subscription-style version of your service that complements a one-time project or order.
5. Constantly analyze new opportunities
It doesn’t matter who your target audience is or what kind of service you offer. There are always new opportunities on the horizon. This could be a new channel to reach customers, a competitor going out of business or even improving your own skills so you can offer new services.
For example, Matthew Sheridan, founder and CEO of Nix Censors, has been able to create and market an award-winning colormeter by tapping into a creative consumer audience. “Using customer feedback and industry advice, we have optimized our products and software, providing features that are more useful to our customers. As we focus on their feedback, we have not only been able to improve our product, we have also been able to unveil our new flagship product to professionals, technology enthusiasts and designers in more than 50 countries worldwide. “
Growth-obsessed businesses are actively monitoring their industry and the business world as a whole so that they can identify new opportunities and determine if they are appropriate. An active approach enables you to be an early receiver, which leads to much higher growth potential.
Growing up
The ability to grow your business is never 100 percent under your control. Changing markets and customer preferences always play a role in how much you can raise your bottom line in any given year.
But at the end of the day, your own effort (or lack thereof) is something that every great leader can control. By imitating other growth-oriented business practices, you can go a long way in increasing your revenue and achieving your biggest business goals.