4 Growth Strategies For Businesses To Grow In Any Economy

Starting a business is the road less traveled for seasoned professionals. This is especially true in the new “normal”. The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic has many employees rethinking how to economically pivot from the delicate status quo brought on by the crisis. This has created entrepreneurial opportunities for those who wish to veer away from the daily grind of a salaried employee. 

Prior to the pandemic, this has always been the recommended path by many successful business leaders who have started a legacy of success. Starting from a small enterprise to a large conglomerate, a growing business is a sure sign of economic growth and can lead to a successful enterprise. 

There’s an old proverb, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now,”. This describes that no matter the circumstance, a tenacious, forward-thinking entrepreneur will always see opportunity where others see adversity.

If you can grow your business successfully, you can consider yourself part of a small but elite group of individuals that can claim to have made a meaningful contribution to society.

Creating a business is never easy. It requires frequent planning, strong financing, and good business sense. If you have started a business or are planning to create one, you have to realize at some point that your business can grow organically up to a certain point. To ensure its continuing success, certain factors need to be considered to ensure that your life's work will continue.

Also read: 10 Skills managers need to develop in the new normal

Business growth is a standard measurement of success for any commercial enterprise. They can be gauged by considering a combination of different criteria such as:

• Sales revenue

  • value of business generated by the company in a given time period

• Market capitalization

  • Value of equity to investors or owners

• Profitability

  • Net profit after taxes and operational expenses

• Customer retention

  • Size of the existing market

• Customer acquisition

  • Number of potential customers from total market share

• Company assets

  • Assets legally owned by the company after subtracting liabilities

Several methods are used and other criteria can also be added to calculate the rate of business growth. Recently, a new way of measuring business has been used to determine success. This is called the Exponential Growth model. Unlike conventional methods that determine the success of a commercial enterprise, the value of business is measured on its rate of growth in succeeding periods of time. This kind of rapid growth has been observed as a trend in mostly technology companies and social media ad platforms but can also be applied to other startup industries.

Some external factors may affect the rate of growth of your company. The most common of these are varying market attitudes towards spending, economic stability of the market, and price volatility of production cost and supplies. There are other factors involved that may either help growth or stagnate the expansion of your business.

As a general rule, you can follow these successful business growth strategies to fit your preferred approach on how to keep increasing your business activities at a constant rate.

Small, successful companies can often take market share from established market leaders by using their ability to quickly react to market demands. There is a perpetual push and pull for market share between competitors and depending on the strategic execution, they can be pulled off successfully by small startups that can disrupt an existing market. 

There are several strategic techniques that can be executed or combined with other ideas such as:

• offering lower prices

• being more willing to bend to market demands through availability, logistics

• adding value-added services while maintaining an acceptable quality standard

• exceeding expectations from customers.

Depending on your industry and business growth objectives, this may be applicable to both startups, small businesses, or medium to large companies ready to compete in a dominated, existing market to maintain business growth.

Using careful planning and precise execution to generate business in a new market is another strategy for your business to further its reach. Being able to understand the business conditions of a market allows companies, big or small, to sell existing products in new markets that can develop new sales opportunities. 

Becoming successful in executing this strategy could mean expansion of business from a local level to national or even international markets. It could also mean reaching out to other areas of opportunity such as classifying the market according to age, income class, spending personas or other distinctive conventions. Depending on the industry, you can also redevelop a new product/service line based on the prevailing demand.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Conducting needs-based research on an existing market, taking note of features or services customers wish they could have, finding ways to efficiently address current problems with minimal disruption, are just some of the questions that lead towards the development of new products or services that aim to answer the results of the research. 

Being able to provide solutions to answer these market demands will certainly spur growth for your business. Companies can use different ways to develop products in an existing market, they could be based on:

• pricing

• development of new features

• product positioning

• other deciding factors that could push customers towards choosing what your business can offer.

Companies aspire to become a market leader in their industry. At some point they have to go beyond their comfort zone and diversify their commercial interests outside their core business. Taking on this growth strategy takes a high risk, high reward approach. 

To mitigate the risks involved, you can lead your business by approaching new ventures with calculated risks and weighing on the potential rewards if it becomes a success. Additionally, some diversification strategies allow some flexibility for pivoting from the initial business plan to allow a safer way that can lead to growth. 

Most medium to large companies can leverage funds, management experience, and operations capability from their core business or they may take on new investors to expand the business with maximized growth in mind. 

For smaller companies such as startups or MSMEs (Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises), some start their core business and grow revenue while sacrificing long-term profit. This diversification allows them to try other profitable ventures with less risk but requires more funding and more risk.

With these strategies in mind, some of the best ways to grow your business is strengthening your core business. Having a strong core business portfolio allows investors to have confidence in the next phase of your business as you consider expanding it to other commercial interests or innovate in an area where it already performs well. 

This will add credibility to your potential as a market leader and may inspire others to invest in your vision for business growth. Having a team of management experts solidifies your new venture as you expand your enterprise into these new areas of opportunity. As a leader, you must be able to decide the best strategy to fit your vision in taking on a new business for strategic growth.

To help you in creating the best strategy for growth, you should be able to hire the right candidates that have the experience and expertise to help fill the gaps–and more importantly, retain your talent.

For a start, check out the right members for your team by visiting Talent Search. You can also visit Inspirations to gain a better understanding of the expertise you need to strategically grow your business.

Ready to begin? Jumpstart your recruitment and hire for free with JobStreet by registering here today.