7 Tips for Growing a Successful Business

It is never “easy” to succeed in business. Some business owners think they can jump straight online or throw open the doors and start making money overnight. Sadly, it’s not usually that easy! Sure, some get lucky and get busy without much knowledge or effort. But, the ones who do well and last for a long time, are the people who spent time planning, preparing, and understanding the challenges ahead.

With that in mind, let’s discuss some of the key tips for growing a successful business. Whether you are on day one of your business journey or a bit further down the line, these tips will still be relevant. Whatever your business is and whatever it is you are selling, you will be able to use a combination of these ideas and methods to generate more revenue and grow your business into a successful enterprise. Read on to find out our 7 top tips for growing a successful business, as recommended by business owners.

Be Meticulous With Planning and Organization

The first tip may seem broad and slightly obvious, but it truly is key to success. You need to be super organized, meticulous with planning, and more detailed than you’ve ever been. Paul, a business owner specializing in booking Narrator voice actors told us, “When I started my business, I planned every detail down to the finest grain. I knew what would happen in every eventuality, which made me prepared for when things inevitably did go wrong!” When it comes to business planning at the very beginning, it can seem very easy to write down an idea and how you’ll make it successful. But, as Paul says, you need to have a plan and information about how things will be if they don’t go perfectly.

This kind of planning is required at every stage of a business, too. Drawing up an amazing business plan for your first year or two is one thing, but what about planning for expansion or the next stage of your business? Once again, be meticulous. Set dates for certain tasks to be done. Set goals, progress points, and plan for every eventuality. Use apps and other tools to keep organized, store, and share plans.

Get To Know Your Customers

Speaking of apps and tools, getting to know your customers and how they work is becoming much easier these days with the use of CRM software. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software can become your all-in-one business platform for analytics, marketing, reporting, and finance. It can also help with our previous point of keeping data, documents and plans organized.

Most importantly, CRM can help you understand your customers better. You will be able to clearly visualise with data what your customers respond best to, what they engage most with, whether they even open e-mails and more. It has become the go-to tool for any customer-based business and we cannot recommend it enough.

Prepare To Make Sacrifices

When launching or scaling up a new business of your own, you will probably have to make some sacrifices to make it work. Many new business owners pay themselves as little as possible, to help the business succeed and become profitable. Many work 60 or 70 hours a week to run the business! There are plenty of personal sacrifices to be made for the sake of scaling up a business. Of course, don’t run yourself into the ground, make sure you take some personal time to look after yourself! All we’re saying is if you really want it, you have to be prepared to throw your all at it.

Understand The Finances

Many of the industry professionals we spoke to had the same story: “When I started out, I didn’t really comprehend the financials properly, it nearly ruined me.” Business plans, spreadsheets, financial forecasts. None of these things are easy to master. Planning for high, medium, and low turnover all at the same time also isn’t easy. Getting a grip on the financials behind your business growth, however, is essential. Without a clear understanding of how much your business needs to survive and thrive, you could spend months heading down a path of financial disaster before it’s too late to fix. 

Show Your Passion

You want people to buy into your business, then you’re going to need them to buy into you. Showing your passion for a product, venue, or business idea will make you more investable, both in the financial and personal sense. Think about your favourite restaurant, for example. You probably go back there because both the product and the people were great. Same with anyone you’ve done business with; you want to like them and the product they are selling, right? Show your passion, drive, and determination and you’ll get customers returning over and over again.

Use Social Media

If you don’t already, it’s time to harness the power of social media. It’s the world’s best free marketing tool! Obviously, you can also pay to boost your marketing potential, but for now, let’s just discuss how much you can do for free. In theory, it’s simple to grow your following. Post quality content and post it often. Then, interact with every single person who engages you. Communicate, talk, share and be real with your social media following. You will find that as these interactions happen, more people find your page naturally (your CRM software will help with analysing social media, too!) You can also use social media to run contests, crowdsource ideas, and so much more.

Measure and Assess

To ensure your business keeps growing it’s important to measure and assess your business as you go. Set milestones and goals to aim for, then check-in at regular intervals to see if you are working successfully towards that goal. Are you happy? Is the business growing? Take time to reflect on and answer these questions to make sure you’ve not lost sight of your business aims and objectives. 

These seven tips, tools, and ideas should help you start, grow, or scale up your business. Take on board all these small pieces of advice and use them together to create a long-lasting and successful business plan. Whatever your business may be, we wish you luck in growing it.