What’s Stopping Your Business From Growing?

When you first started your small business, you may have set goals that matched its size. Now that you’ve been making a profit for a while, like many other business-owners, you may have hit a plateau. Scaling up your business might seem risky or difficult, but you really can help your business grow with a few small changes to your operations… and your mindset!

Here’s what’s stopping many business owners like you from scaling up:

Lack of Long-Term Plans

If you don’t have a business plan, or haven’t created one since your business’s early stages, growth is not imminent. If you do have a business plan that you update often, but you only plan the next 12 months, you need to start making tentative plans for the next 5 years to help you make “big picture” decisions that will affect your long-term growth. Of course, nobody can predict the future, which can make long-term planning challenging, so you can expect to revise the long-term plan as needed. Make the documents easily accessible to everyone in your company.

Fear Of Delegation

Do you feel like if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself? Delegating tasks can be difficult because you have to train your employee to do it in a way you’d be satisfied with. It can help to take the time to create a written guide or video so you’ll spend less time teaching other employees how to complete the task.

Not Getting To Know Your Customers

In order to continue to better serve your existing customers and impress new ones, you need to be accessible for honest feedback. You can offer your customers coupons when they review your business online, but online reviews tend to not be very detailed. It can help to directly ask your customers about their experience, or train your employees to ask for feedback. An old-fashioned suggestion slip can also help you collect honest feedback.

Falling Behind Competitors

Do you know who your competitors are? When was the last time you checked for new competing businesses, as well as those in adjacent sectors? Find out what new technologies your competitors are using, and connect with adjacent businesses to see if you can work together on joint offerings.

Not Getting Help From Specialists

It’s hard to know where you might have gaps in your knowledge and skills, which is why an outside view from a specialist can be a huge eye-opener. Not sure why your current marketing plan isn’t working? Speak to a marketing specialist. Want to redesign your storefront, but unsure how to allocate your renovation budget to improve the customer experience? There’s a specialist for that too. It’s okay to not know everything, all the time.