Biggest Business Growth Strategy Mistakes that Companies Make

8/13/2013

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Business growth strategies come in all shapes and sizes but some companies commit grave mistakes in terms of choosing goals and coming up with the best steps for success. Here are five of the most common business growth plan mistakes that interfere with company expansion.

Thinking Too Big or Thinking Too Small
Your goals are the heart and soul of your growth plan. The goal will be determining for everything else. Thinking too big or thinking too small will interfere with the actual growth of the business.

Goals should be achievable, yet they should result in a significant improvement or accomplishment. At the same time, trying to make five million dollars in one year may be unattainable at your current stage of development.

Be realistic, know your skills and the potential of your company. You should also allow yourself an opportunity to dream a bit. Find the middle ground and choose that as your business growth goal.

Lack of Focus
The lack of focus is a very common mistake in business growth strategies.

Your goals should be highly specific rather than vague and undefined. Getting more clients is far from a specific business goal. Think about where you want to be in one year, in five years and after a decade.

The success of non-specific plans is difficult to measure, which means it will be impossible for you to assess performance.

Focus on the Wrong Market
Highly popular markets may seem like a good idea because this is where the money goes, right? Focusing on the wrong market can interfere significantly with business growth strategies.

Specialization is a more logical strategy than entering a highly competitive market, especially if you are a newbie. Find a new sector and address a customer need that nobody else has thought of. Your success will be instantaneous.

Lack of Investment in Marketing
Business growth and marketing go hand in hand. Company owners who are getting started on a tight budget will try to avoid this kind of expenditure. Marketing, however, is a crucially important part of successful business growth strategies.

Even if the marketing budget is minimal, it will have to be included in the growth plan. You could be producing the most practical and innovative product in the world. If nobody knows about your product, the sales will remain low and you will declare bankruptcy in a very short period of time.

Lack of Investment in Staff Training
Each market changes rapidly. New technologies and trends affect the manner in which business is done.

Failing to invest in staff training will deprive you of competitive advantage. You should be ahead of the competition. Training your employees and providing them with new professional skills will help you achieve the goal.

Drafting the best business growth strategy can be challenging. You can commit various mistakes that will interfere with expansion. Take some time to define your goals clearly and think of the best ways that will help you achieve growth.
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Business Growth Plans Through Twitter

3/10/2013

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Twitter is a great way to grow your business. This is because Twitter is one of the easiest ways to reach people online who are interested in your particular field. You can reach a lot more people through social media like Twitter than you could ever do in your particular location. The key with Twitter is to grow a following. This means interacting with other people on Twitter as much as is feasible.

-Schedule Ahead of Time
It’s true that in order to maximize business growth in the most efficient way possible, you’ll need to be careful how exactly you use your time. As a result, using a Twitter tool to schedule tweets ahead of time can save you a lot of time and effort.

After all, it’s quite difficult to come up with enough time in very day to put out clever tweets right in the middle of all of the important things you do. By scheduling them all out ahead of time you will be able to make sure you have saturation in your field without having to spend too much effort in order to achieve this.

-Be Sure to Interact
But the important thing to remember is that Twitter is made up of people. You can’t just leave the scheduled Tweets by themselves. People will figure this out eventually and they will grow tired of it. People like to feel like there is a person on the other side of the screen on Twitter. After all, that is half the point of Twitter in the first place. It’s not just an advertising service, it’s social media. The interaction is important.

What this means for you is that you need to think of growing your business in terms of growing your connections with people. You need to actually glance at the responses to your tweets on a regular basis, and write a few responses back.

While this can be frustrating to do in the middle of the many other aspects of your business, it may be useful to think of it in terms of exponential growth. The more people you get on your side, the more they’ll be inclined to spread your message to others. It may take a lot of effort in the beginning to get something started, but for every one person you interact with, many more people will read it. And each of those people could tell other people about what they’ve read if they are interested in it. If you gain a reputation for interacting with people on Twitter personally it will generate good will that will make this process much more likely.

Before you know it, the few hundred you gained in the beginning through a hard slog could become many thousands without you needing to do anything more than what you’ve already done. That is the nature of social media and the main reason why it can be so powerful for growing any venture in a short amount of time.
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Essential Payment Tips for Business Growth

2/10/2013

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When it comes to small businesses, there are a few things that are important, that you really must do in order to succeed. It’s a unique environment after all. Each part of the business is essential to supporting all other parts of the business, so the important thing is to make sure you properly follow each “must” part of a business growth. If you lack any of these pieces the enter thing could come apart. Some of these musts include:

-Ensure Payment

This many seem obvious but it’s not as straight forward as you might think. It’s obviously true that if you don’t get paid then you won’t succeed in a small business. Part of the problem is that a lot of your clients in a small business environment may have more of an informal agreement with you. Some clients that are less scrupulous might change their mind about the agreement you made at the last second, before you’ve even delivered them the goods or service.

Some of the seriously unscrupulous ones might not pay you even after. It’s hard to always determine who is going to be honorable about payment and who is not. This is especially the case if you do a large amount of work through the Internet, without even seeing someone’s face, for example. That’s why it’s useful to talk to them on the phone if at all possible. If you have a better sense for someone’s mannerisms and what they expect, you may be able to get a better bead on how they are likely to treat you in a business transaction.

-Get Some Upfront

But overall, having potential trouble with clients over payment is just one of the problems all small business owners have to deal with. One of the solutions to do this problem is to get some portion of your payment up front. This can be as little as 10 percent, but up to 25 percent is often accepted based on the industry. This is especially true if you have any kind of large contract with a client, even more so if the client is untested.

Really it’s the best idea to get a business growth plan contract if the amount is large enough, since this is the only way to have a chance of being certain that you’ll be paid enough to keep your business going. Any business that doesn’t ensure payment won’t be a business for very long.
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