What is “business growth”?

When defining business growth it is important not to take the word “growth” too literally. Mistakes are often made whereby growth is interpreted as making a business merely bigger across all aspects; more staff, more clients, more premises etc. The issue with this simplistic view is there is a risk you become busy fools, working 24 hours a day, making no money as all resources are being used to satisfy the “bigger is better” mentality. Instead business growth should be understood as improving measures within the business in order to increase the end return, whether that be business valuation or remuneration.

When is a good time to consider business growth?

The reality with business growth is that it is a necessity for all owners at all times. By ignoring the opportunities to grow you are risking the long term success of your business. The reason for that is that the majority of your competitors ARE growing their businesses, therefore if you are not careful customers will move to your competition based on a superior offering.

What benefits will I have from growing my business?

What business growth creates is a forward-looking mentality within a business’s strategic thinking. It forces businesses to improve all aspects of their operations in order to meet the growth objective of increasing returns. A very common example is looking at sales, of which a standard growth strategy would be “increase sales, increases return”. From this simple objective however in turn creates multitude of questions and actions that improve a business’s operations;

How do you achieve more sales? Discussions may be around offering additional services to existing customers for easy wins, or maybe attracting new customers on a larger scale.

Do they value your product or service?  There is no point trying to increase sales if customers find it inferior to competitor products.

How do we contact potential customers to make sales? Discussing marketing options available.

Do we have the resources to meet extra sales demand? A business would need to look into premises space available, manpower, cashflow, machinery, supplier limitations etc.

As you can see this very simply growth strategy actually looks at and improves all areas of the business.

What strategies and plans are available?

The key thing for all businesses is to have a key objective. From this foundation it is then possible to implement growth strategies knowing what the end goal is. It is vital that growth strategies consider the major four parts of every business being; financial, sales, internal processes and development.

There are many strategies available to employ by businesses but the important aspect to remember is “no one size fits all”. Every business is bespoke and therefore strategies must be tailored to meet the unique business structure, client base and operations.

How can you help me grow my business?

As Birmingham accountants, looking to local client success stories James, Stanley & Co are proud to engage with a client who has traded over a hundred years within the highly competitive jewellery market, as well as another client trading as an association who achieved a million pound turnover within a two year period. In addition to the expertise and expertise our team employ, we also invest heavily in the latest business growth technology that includes;

Forecasting – whereby clients summarise and monitor all business growth strategies on one piece of A4 paper every month with our guidance.

Pricing and profit maximisation -  a software tool that enables clients to test pricing strategies based on current financial results, so that anything employed has been tried and tested.

Business plan – the blueprint for any successful business. We help clients develop their own bespoke plan with the latest trend and forecast analysis on offer. We can assist with Liveplan forecasting.

Contact us

If you are a new business looking for guidance or an existing business stuck in the mud, contact one of the team here at James, Stanley & Co to help plan and grow your business.