You’re getting your business of the ground and there’s inevitably much to do. You need to organize your offerings, market your business and acquire your customers. Over time, your priorities are clear – to maximize sales and cash flow – and finally, you come to a point where you have enough to sustain the business for awhile.
But it doesn’t stop there. At these “plateau” moments, it’s easy for paralysis and complacency to set in. It’s also easy to get distracted from the core of what made business so good in the first place.
The key: developing a sound, yet flexible business strategy that can guide your focus. The strategy should be flexible enough allow the business to change direction quickly while giving insight into the changes you need to make to bring your business ideas to fruition. With a strategy in place, you have a ‘business backbone’ from which to draw on during times of both strong and weak performance.
From increasing your marketing efforts to streamlining productivity, the possibilities can seem endless. Yet, with a little structure and insight, you can easily create processes and plans that will continue to leverage your achievements.
Focus Forward: Business Strategy Basics
Now is the perfect time to take stock of what’s working, what’s not working and what you can do to make things even better. Think about it – you’re already doing well; imagine what can be done if you put plans in place to make things even better!
- Assess your current state: Ask customers and employees what your business does well and what can be done better. You’ll be able to assess the gaps in performance regarding products/service, customer service and operations.
- Develop ideas for new products and services: Use customer input to develop fresh product and service ideas. Which customer needs are not currently being met by your offerings? Schedule a working session with your employees to brainstorm possible ways to fulfill those needs by developing new offerings.
- Consider your current marketing strategy: What is the value proposition you offer to your customers? More important, how are you communicating it to them? From your Web site to your marketing collateral, identify, through customer feedback and internal analysis, whether or not your communications are solid and powerful enough to sustain long-term. In addition, determine whether or not certain marketing strategies need to be added or removed from your current mix. The U.S Department of Commerce published an excellent resource for small businesses on advertising and marketing basics.
- Attend industry-relevant conferences or tradeshow events. While this is important to do on a regular basis regardless of where your business is currently at, it helps to justify time spent away from the actual running of the business when things are going well. Do some research to find out which associations are sponsoring conferences or tradeshows that might be beneficial for your business. Not only can you learn important best practices from other industry professionals, you will spend time investing in your network of colleagues – which brings with it its own long-term business value.
Developing a business strategy initially may appear a daunting task, but essentially, it’s a way to keep you focused, on track and never complacent. Think about it as your ‘business fuel’ of sorts – it’s what will keep your business going no matter where you’re at.
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