There are countless good reasons to pursue business growth. By expanding your company, you may hope to strengthen your position in the market, increase revenue, and boost brand awareness. When a new business or startup begins earning a profit from its initial products or services, focusing on expansion is the next logical step.
Similarly, if you own a small business and spot a potential opportunity to increase your share of the market, an expansion might seem the obvious solution.
Be forewarned: with growth comes complexity. Whether it’s legal challenges, hiring headaches, or production problems, complexity scales to the size of the business. Without strategic planning, growth can lead to revenue loss or even mark the end of a business.
How can growth lead to failure? Easier than you might think. When you’re scaling rapidly, the quick decisions you make to meet day-to-day needs could be at odds with your long-term goals. Before you know it, each day that your business survives subtracts one more day from its lifespan.
To avoid this and other unenviable fates when growing your business, you need to spend time researching, planning, and documenting your growth strategy.
What is a business growth strategy, and why do you need it?
Growth strategy definition: A plan to achieve a company’s expansion goals while overcoming current and future obstacles.
Imagine your business goals are a mountain. No matter how far away the mountain is, you can see it on the horizon, and you know you’re making progress as you inch closer to it each day.
But what happens when you encounter obstacles in your path, including large ones that obscure your view of the mountain? Or, what if you spy an interesting-looking trail that meanders off the beaten path but looks promising? And, which direction should you choose when the road forks?
A business growth strategy is akin to a map, plotting the way between you and the mountain. With your map in hand, you can consult it to make the best decisions for your business while staying on track to achieve your goals. In addition, it helps you assess whether interesting side-ventures will help you move closer to the mountain, so you can make decisions for your business confidently and quiet the chorus of “what-ifs.”
A basic growth strategy framework will include a company’s short-term and long-term goals, along with a thorough assessment of its budget, resources, risks, obstacles, and timelines.
How to increase productivity by 80% and grow your business
One mistake new business owners make time and time again is to say, “A growth strategy? Yea, I have one. It’s in my head.”
On the list of creative ways to say “I have no idea what I’m doing,” I’d rank, “it’s in my head” just above “my style is more dynamic,” and below, “I take a more action-oriented approach.”
When your business plans only exist in your head, you can’t delegate tasks to others, so you’re stuck working IN your business instead of working ON your business. Business growth strategies are meant to help your business succeed by ensuring you’ve made accurate assumptions and planned for both the short- and long-terms.
Every business will have to overcome challenges as they pursue their goals. However, a common theme I hear from leaders seeking growth strategy coaching and consulting is that their business is “stuck.” They may have noticed that their usual processes are no longer delivering results or feel that they’ve invested too much time and focus on a failing plan to abandon it now. Whatever it is, they all share the same concern that, without making a change, they’ll stay stuck in stagnant waters.
When you feel stuck, partnering with a coach is one of the best investments you can make in your business and yourself. An International Coaching Federation survey found that 80% of people who received coaching reported greater self-confidence, with 70% reporting increased productivity as one of the greatest benefits. And the median ROI for companies that invested in executive coaching was 700% of the initial investment.
For leaders, the coaching process serves as a venue to tap into your strengths, develop new skills, and form tactical and strategic plans to grow your business.
How Leader’s Cut can help your business grow
In nearly every pursuit, great coaches and mentors are critical to success. Even childhood chess prodigies and natural-born athletes know they need a coach to realize their full potential. If you’re a leader planning to grow your business, the same logic applies. Just as a coach helps an athlete improve her natural talent or guides a musician as he evolves in his craft, a business coach helps leaders hone and master their skills.
If you’ve found that your business’ growth has plateaued despite your efforts, or your bookshelves are bending under the weight of all the business books that failed to deliver sustainable, long-term results, you’re not alone. Plenty of leaders find themselves disappointed time and again when the latest “big idea” from a thought leader fizzles out after a few weeks. Coaching is effective because it acknowledges that growth requires a tactical and sustainable approach unique to each business and its needs.
At Leader’s Cut, provide one-on-one business coaching, growth strategy consulting, growth strategy coaching, and more to help leaders leverage their natural genius and bring themselves and their organizations to new heights of success.
Conclusion
Growing your business isn’t always easy, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. (Don’t work with people who lie to you.) But, growing your business without a strategy? That’s a recipe for disaster.
As a Business Strategist, Executive Coach, and former Fortune 500 Executive Leader, I’ve seen the difference that business coaching and well-devised business growth strategies can make. If you’d like to learn more about how executive leadership coaching can help you strengthen and develop your growth strategy or find out if our Making the Cut strategy is right for your business, let’s get together and chat. Schedule a free 15-minute meet and greet conversation with me here to get started.
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