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Tips on How You Can Grow Your Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Grow your business|Tips on How You Can Grow Your BusinessEveryone wants to succeed in the business world, yet not everyone achieves the goal since some lack the tools, skills, and attitude to grow their businesses. Many start their businesses thinking that they will open their doors, turn on their computers, and start making money even as the business grows. Unfortunately, this has never been the case since growing a business is more challenging than many think and needs many sacrifices.

Here are six simple steps you can use to help your small business grow and achieve the success everyone is hoping for.

Enhance Creativity

Always be in the business of looking for ways to improve your business and make it stand out from the many competitors. One of the ways you can use to reach the market is through proper branding through a design cloud that is fast, flexible, and affordable. This will change how your business uses graphic design to reach the target market.

Stay Focused

“Rome was never built in a single day; thus, starting your own business never implies that you are going to start making money straight away and grow. As much as it will take you time to grow, always stay focused as people recognize you in the market, and with time, you will succeed. Besides your long-term goals, make sure you also focus on the short-term goals that are very necessary to grow to newer heights.

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Keep Good Records

If you want your business to succeed, you must keep detailed records of your finances, assets, and even liabilities. This will help you know where your business is, the hurdles you have to overcome to grow, and the steps you need to take to achieve your goals. In addition, knowing your financial position backed with the records will give you time to strategize on how you can overcome any challenge and be ahead of your competitors.

Be Organized

If you want to grow and enjoy much success in your business, organization is vital as it will help you complete tasks in the proper order. First, you have to create a to-do list that will help you plan your day and stay on top of tasks to be done. Then, as you complete every job, you must check it off to ensure you don’t forget any of them.

Make Sacrifices

The lead-up to growing your business is hard work and sacrifices right from when you open your doors. In most cases, you have to put in extra effort and spend more time at work than with your family. You will have to make both financial sacrifices and time to stay ahead of your competitors, who are also coming up with better strategies to be ahead of the curve.

Conclusion

Instead of growing, approximately 20% of businesses fail in the first two years of operation, while another 45% fall in the first five years. The failure to grow can be associated with a lack of strategies and a proper plan. The tips mentioned above can help you achieve success and help your business grow.

The Things Every New Business Needs To Succeed

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |New Business|The Things Every New Business Needs To SucceedThere are a lot of things that every new business needs to succeed. Having a plan, understanding your market, and building a brand identity are a few examples. Creating a plan for your business is one of the most important things you can do to ensure success. If you want to start your own business, it’s not enough just to have an idea anymore – now you need to know where to start and what steps need to be taken in order for it to succeed.

Every entrepreneur starts off with a dream and a passion for what they want to do. However, a lot of people fail to turn their dreams into a reality. So it really does help to have a bit of an idea of what you need to do in order to get to where you want to be.

What Makes a Successful Business?

The things that make a business a success can vary. For some, it will be their marketing strategy, for others it will be their product idea. But, it’s safe to say that there will be some unity in most cases. And so, if you like the idea of starting out right, it’s a good idea to follow a few set steps.

Getting to Know Your Business Goals

Business goals are essential for any company to succeed in the long run. The goal of a business is not to make a lot of money or be famous – it’s to make a profit and provide its customers with what they need.

It is important for a business owner to know their business goals and how to measure them in order for them to improve their company’s performance. This is an effective way that you can understand your business objectives.

In order for them to understand their business goals, you should identify your organization’s vision, mission, and values. It is also important that you set up clear limits on what you want from your company in order to determine how successful it can be.

Developing Your Company’s Mission Statement & Values

Companies need to have a clear mission and vision to guide them while they’re growing. This can be done by creating a mission statement and values that will foster the company’s culture, ideals, and beliefs.

Essentially, a mission statement defines what you do and why you do it for your customers. It should be concise, but focused on what inspires you to wake up in the morning and work hard.

A company’s values should also guide its decision making process, so knowing what your company stands for will help all of your employees work together towards a common goal. That’s why we recommend having clear intentions with your values so that everyone knows where they stand at any given moment.

Identifying Your Target Audience and Reaching Your Customers

Next, you need to make sure that you know who your audience is. While the target audience is an important step in any marketing strategy, it is not always easy to identify who they are and how best to reach them.

The first step for identifying your target audience is understanding what your business does and who its customers are. If you know this, then it will be easier for you to figure out who your ideal customer is. You can then create profiles on who they are and work out a strategy to target them.

Creating a Successful Marketing Strategy that Gets Results

Now you need to work out how you’re going to target your audience by marketing to them. A successful marketing strategy depends on three things: where you want to go, what you sell and how you sell it.

This starts with your company’s core offer and understanding what makes a product or service stand out from its competitors. This will help you create a marketable message. You then need to choose the platforms you’ll deliver this on too.

In order to make sure that your marketing strategy is successful, you need to make sure that it aligns with your company’s goals. Your business will be able to grow as a result of the strategy as well as the product or service itself.

How to Create an Online Presence with Social Media

Right now, having some kind of presence on social media is always going to be a great idea. But if you want to create your online presence with social media, the first thing you need to do is build up your following.

This means that you need to know how to create content that will engage your target audience on your chosen platform. You need to interact with them and get them to engage with your content or move to your site. You could even look to do paid campaigns or work with influencers to make this happen.

Working With Experts That Can Add Value to Your Business

But then also, it’s important to recognize the value in working with experts and professionals in your business. It’s important to get the right expertise for your business and the best way to do that is by finding people who can add value to your business.

To do this, you need to identify who and what you need. Do you need an accountant or financial specialist? Or maybe you need complete on-site & in house welding services for your product? It might even be a great idea to hire a business expert or consult to help you grow and reach your goals too.

Having Determination To Succeed and A Vision of What Success Looks Like

It is easy to be determined when your vision is clear and you have the drive to achieve success. You will know that you are on the right path when things get tough and you don’t stop.

It’s not always easy to see success because we can’t predict how different things will turn out in the future. But we do know what it takes to succeed. It’s taking action and working hard every day, no matter how much it seems like nobody wants or likes what we do.

Want To Create SMART Objectives? Here’s How

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StrategyDriven Strategic Planning Article |Business Objectives|Want To Create SMART Objectives? Here's HowNo matter what type of business you have, you’ll need to set clear objectives quarterly or annually. A way of identifying future goals, along with the timeline, they will help you to achieve growth.

Whether your objectives involve increasing business revenue, maximizing your profits, providing better customer service or improving the productivity within your workplace, if you use the right tools you’ll be able to accomplish it.

For these to be successful, you should make them SMART. But what does this mean?

Specific:

You need to ensure that you’re setting very specific objectives. The more specific they are, the more likely it is that you’ll achieve them. An example of an objective which is specific is – increasing sales by 25% by the end of the next quarter through an online marketing campaign. Giving your employees clear guidance, they know what they should be working towards.

Measurable:

When creating your objectives, you should also make them measurable. Identifying exactly what you want to see when you reach your goal, you’ll be able to use the results to showcase their measurability. Breaking it into various elements, it’s a way of refining the steps you will have to take.

Attainable:

Are they attainable? During the process, you need to make sure that you’re not setting goals that are out of reach. To make these achievable and attainable, you need to prepare your staff in advance and have the resources in place.

Realistic:

Can you realistically accomplish these? Are they relevant to your exact needs? These thoughts should be consistent throughout the process to ensure that you’re following the right path.

Timely:

You need to set a deadline – otherwise, you’ll find that there is no hurry to focus on the objectives. This deadline doesn’t have to be rigid, it can be flexible – as long as you or your employees don’t lose sight of what you want to achieve.

So, how do you create them?

Identify The Objective’s Priorities

At the start of the process, you should sit down with your employees and map out what your objectives should be. By setting a concrete vision and conducting a SWOT analysis, you’ll be able to analyze your business’ opportunities, strengths, weaknesses and any potential threats.

Through an open discussion, you should pay attention to key areas within your business, looking at how the objectives can be shaped around them. For example:

  • In the Finance Department, an objective could be to cut spending and improve profit margins.
  • In Operations, you could introduce new technology or update your current software.
  • In Quality – introduce new processes so that all of your products/services are to the highest possible quality.

While identifying priorities and performing a SWOT analysis, you can also review your business’ past performance. Using KPIs as a benchmark, you can create a comparison between your past and future performance.

Evaluate the Market

After identifying priorities, set about evaluating the current market situation. By looking at the market and industry as a whole, you’ll start to notice trends for the upcoming year. Helping you to compete successfully alongside other players within the industry, it will give you a clearer picture of how your company will fit into the landscape.

Keep Your Employees in The Loop

Throughout the course of achieving your business objectives, you should keep your employees up to date with the success of them. By asking for feedback and uncovering the impact that different changes have on your business, you’ll be able to plan your next steps.

A good way of getting your employees involved is through an OKR (Objectives and Key Results spreadsheet). Shared across the company, it will list the steps that each employee will take to achieve the objectives.

Use Sales Playbooks

By utilizing the power of AI Generated Sales Playbooks, you’ll be able to characterize the responsibilities for both you and your sales team. Identifying metrics for measurement and the right approach for successfully closing sales, you’ll be able to establish more concrete objectives.

Why Committing to Becoming 1% Better Every Day Can Turn Everything around

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StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |Pursuit of Excellence|Why Committing to Becoming 1% Better Every Day Can Turn Everything aroundEveryone wants to achieve a degree of excellence in their lives, whether that means developing a killer business that takes the industry by storm, and revolutionises how things are done, or whether it means being the best possible spouse, parent, or friend we can be.

To that end, it pretty much goes without saying that, at any given time, hordes of people are doing their best to carry out ambitious plans for self-development, in the pursuit of that elusive and much-craved “excellence.”

Does your business involve a decent degree of marketing? Then, no doubt, you’re interested in applying next level channel marketing strategies to really kick things up a notch. Are you perhaps not in the best physical shape of your life, but really want to be? Then, you’re probably also one of the millions of people who sign up for the gym each January, in order to make good on a New Year’s resolution to get fit.

The only problem is, it’s actually legitimately difficult to become “excellent” in any given domain. Not only that, but it’s typically difficult even knowing how to begin setting about pursuing excellence in many dimensions of life.

The thing about big plans is that they are difficult to execute, difficult to keep track of, and are prone to all sorts of hiccups and mishaps along the way. It’s for this reason, among others, that Scott Adams – the famous creator of the Dilbert comics – advises that people should forget about goals altogether, and should focus on “systems” instead.

According to Adams, “systems” are the daily routines and rituals that you act out, that move you closer to success and prosperity in a given area; whereas goals are about setting a target for some point in the future, and then living in a state of permanent dissatisfaction and disappointment, as a result.

There are good critiques to be made of Adams anti-goal stance. But, there’s no denying that focusing on certain daily “systems” can be a powerful way of achieving excellence in work and life.

One “system” that has been promoted by many serious business and lifestyle gurus, is the pursuit of becoming “1% better” in a given area, each day.

Here are a few reasons why committing to becoming 1% better every day may turn everything around for you.

Because it’s a realistic scale of achievement and progress

To use the analogy of fitness, once more – setting yourself a goal like “I’m going to run an ultramarathon,” when you currently can’t even jog 1 mile without wheezing – or setting yourself a goal like “I’m going to bench press 300 pounds,” when you currently can’t even do a single push-up – may well not be the most productive way forward.

Among other things, setting yourself these kinds of major, ambitious goals right out the gate, puts you in a position where the scale of achievement and progress you’re aiming for is extremely difficult to conceptualise, or believe in.

It’s not that you can’t achieve those feats – it’s just that, until you get closer, you may struggle immensely to “believe in” them, or to feel satisfied by the progress you’re making along the path.

Striving to become “1% better each day,” on the other hand, represents a realistic scale of achievement and progress that just about everyone can believe in, regardless of where they’re starting off from.

Of course, “1%” isn’t a perfectly mathematical calculation, here. It’s just a euphemism for making really small, but consistent, improvements every day. Perhaps you went for a 10-minute jog yesterday, and felt exhausted. So, today, try to go for an 11-minute jog. this will be achievable for you, and you will feel good about achieving it, too. Then, tomorrow, you can go for a 12-minute jog. And so on.

After a year, you’re likely to be in such a dramatically superior position in life, that it’s hard to believe how far you’ve come.

Because momentum is a large part of what success in business is all about

Success in business, specifically, has plenty to do with things like innovation, and hard work, but there’s a good argument to be made that the most important skill for any aspiring entrepreneur, is simple grit, determination, and consistency.

Of course, this applies to just about everything else in life, too. It’s rarely the people who come out with a single dramatic “flash in the pan” burst of hard work who really innovate and transform things, and secure themselves a place in the annals of history.

Far more often, it’s the people who turn up to work every day, whether or not they feel like it, and who keep iterating and optimising, and moving forward, until things come together.

Focusing on becoming 1% better every day is a great way of building that sort of momentum, and of developing the kind of “staying power” that can really move mountains over time.

Striving to become 1% better every day is also a great antidote to the all-too-common tendency of many aspiring entrepreneurs, to want to spend an inordinate amount of time at the “drawing board,” as opposed to actually making things happen.

When you know that it’s about the journey along the road of incremental improvement, rather than the “single miraculous action,” you give yourself permission to actually get started, and work out the kinks along the way.

Because it will prevent you from backsliding

Setbacks inevitably happen, and you’re not always going to be in a better position, business-wise, today than you were yesterday.

All the same, one of the great things of striving to become 1% better every day, is that it puts you in a great frame of mind to avoid backsliding, and to fight against the ever-present threat of entropy.

Even if a crisis situation occurs in your business, and puts you on the back foot, striving to become 1% better will keep you pointed upwards, and will remove your excuses for compromising, or taking the easy way out.

Ultimately, guarding yourself against the tendency to backslide is just as important as anything else, when it comes to consistency and the pursuit of excellence.

Key Strategic Action Questions

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Leaders can sometimes get sidelined and stuck in a rut by focusing too much on tactics rather than strategies, and on what happened yesterday rather than what needs to happen tomorrow and the many tomorrows to come. Here are some questions to answer when you are thinking about Strategic Action. You might want to rate yourself on the questions including – how often and how well do you ask yourself and your people these questions?

Questions to Answer

1. Mission – the organization’s core work; reason/purpose for being

  • Why does this organization exist?
  • Whom does it serve?
  • What distinguishes it from other organizations?
  • What do you do that gives the organization meaning?

2. Vision – an inspiring, passionate, image of what the organization needs to and will become; a mental, even visual, model of the future; what success looks like

  • What kind of organization do you want to become?
  • What legacy do you want to leave?
  • How do you want to be perceived in the world? Be known for?
  • What does your ideal world look like?
  • What’s organizational culture do you want to create and how do you expect that culture will help you achieve your vision and strategic goals?

3. Values – the behaviors and actions that create the culture in the organization, the beliefs that drive decisions about people and work

  • What are the principles that guide your decision-making?
  • What can your stakeholders rely on in terms of the quality of programs/services/products delivered?
  • What do you stand for and how do you show that to each other?

When MVV are established and clear, you can begin to align people and work in significant and meaningful ways. Everything you do should align with your Mission, advance you toward your Vision, and be in harmony with your Values.

4. Strategies – These FEW BIG things will define how the organization will get where it wants to go. The overarching approach that will significantly advance the Vision and stay true to the Mission and Values.

5. Tactics – Those actions/activities/work, that when accomplished, will align with and advance the Strategies

  • What are the specific areas of work you want to address?
  • What do you want to have completed and by when in these various areas?
  • How will your goals advance your desired strategic outcomes?

6. Objectives – Fall within the Tactics. This is the work each person’s can identify with personally and can link to the organizational strategy, vision and mission

  • What specifically is the work that will advance the strategy and tactics?
  • Who are the right people to have this objective on their ‘plate?’
  • Who’s responsible for making it happen?
  • What are the deliverables, milestones, and time lines?
  • What resources (people, time, money, space, other) are required to make this happen and happen well?
  • What processes need to be in place (i.e. project management, change process, structure) to ensure a positive outcome?

Remember, it IS the leaders’ job to establish the mission and vision. Values should be developed with input and buy in from those who must live by them.

A vision is only a true vision when it has longevity, is not person dependent, and can stand the test of time.

Organizations need a FEW SIGNIFICANT and CLEAR, MEASUREABLE strategies to help advance the larger Vision.

About the Author

Roxi HewertsonLeadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

How can you make the leadership leap gracefully? Well, learning and practicing effective leadership skills is a good place to begin. When you read Roxi’s book you’ll be well on your way! Click here to learn more.