Obviously, when you start a small business, you want to succeed. After all, it is said that most businesses will fail in their first year. But, there are things that you can do in order to make sure that this doesn’t happen, and that your business is indeed a successful one. Here are seven more things to keep in mind to grow your business.
1. You need to Work Hard
To grow your business, tou will need to be at your business all the time, and ready to jump in and do any work that is needed. You will often be faced with the most menial of tasks, but they all need to be done. This includes cleaning, which is noticed a lot more than you may realize.
2. Be Passionate
If you are not enthusiastic about what you are trying to sell (in this case, you are trying to sell your business to the public). The more passionate you are about what you are doing, the more others are going to be infected by your passion. Threadless CEO Jake Nickell said, “I try not to make any decisions that I’m not excited about.”
3. Be Customer-Oriented
Getting and keeping customers is the sign of a successful business, so to grow your business, you need to make sure that you are always focusing on your customers. They should always come first no matter what. The more satisfied they are, the more likely they are to be return customers, and they will recommend your business to others.
4. Be Competitive
In order to stay ahead of the game, you need to keep up with or even get ahead of the competition. You need to create your own competitive advantage, which is going to involve your own special selling proposition. The better this is, the easier it will be to stay competitive. There are other aspects to consider as well, including location, and your products/services.
5. Respect Your Employees
Your employees need to be treated like people, not like numbers. Don’t treat them like many employees at large corporations, who are only seen as faces. You have a great team of talented people. Make sure that they know they are appreciated. Happy employees lead to successful businesses. Kohls Coupons Online CEO Rick Taylor said, “Treat your employees as equals and they’ll make the difference.”
6. Keep Your Focus
If you are all over the place with your ideas for your business, you are never going to truly grow, because you will always be working on too many things. You need to focus, and keep that focus. “The thing that I learned early on is you really need to set goals in your life, both short-term and long-term, just like you do in business. Having that long-term goal will enable you to have a plan on how to achieve it. We apply these skills in business, yet when it comes to ourselves, we rarely apply them,” says Denise Morrison, CEO Campbell Soup Co.
7. Embrace Technology
If you are going to keep up with your competition, you need to keep up with the latest technologies, which are always improving. Technology can be anything from new software to telephone systems and more. If a technology can improve the way that you do business, make sure that you are taking advantage of it. Indra Nooyi, Chairperson and CEO, PepsiCo, said, “The distance between number one and number two is always a constant. If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself and the organization gets pulled up with you. That is a big lesson. I cannot just expect the organization to improve if I don’t improve myself and lift the organization, because that distance is a constant.”
