Small Business Growth Is Planned & Predictable
Guide To Small Business Growth
Are you ready to release the brakes on your business growth this year? If you are working harder than ever, have less and less time and are frustrated at the lack of predictable revenue growth in your business then stop for 10 mins and read this page, it will change your trajectory and give you the right areas to focus on in your business.
The world has changed, has your business?
The speed of change over the last decade has been incredible and impacted every area of our lives, but none more so than small business lead generation and revenue growth. The great news is that many small business owners have pivoted with these changes and leveraged them to grow truly remarkable businesses, but others have been left behind, getting over-whelmed and depsite working harder than ever, they are struggling to grow. If this sounds like you, then take the time to read this page and start executing on the things I share on it.
If you have not done so yet, make sure you download the free guide I have written called “The Ultimate Guide To Small Business Growth” in which I share the 8 secrets to modern small business growth and how to apply them to your business.
The Ultimate Guide To Small Business Growth
Grab your free copy of this incredible free guide in which Richard Mawer, the CEO and Founder of Ignite Growth and Author of the Amazon #1 Best Selling “Remarkable Business Growth” shares the 8 secrets to growing your small business to £1m turnover and beyond.
Unlocking Small Business Growth
[VIDEO] The Secrets To Modern Small Business Growth
The 5 Stages Of Modern Business Growth
Over the years I have worked with hundreds of small business owners, at varying stages of their business growth, from early start ups to larger businesses pushing to eight figures. I have also taken my own businesses on this journey and the one thing I have seen time and again is the fact that every business goes through the same five stages as they grow, the set up stage, the wasteland, the lifestyle business, the wilds and the performance business stage.
As you can see above, each stage has its own unique challenges to overcome and break-through to the next stage, but these are predictable and when you understand them you can plan a strategy to overcome them.
The majority of business owners I work with have got through the start up stage and are in the “wasteland” of organic growth. They have taken on more clients, they have recruited and grown their team to around 4 / 5 people and revenue has slowly grown to around the £350-500k mark, but then they flatline. They are working harder than ever but struggling to grow past this point. Take a look at the graphic above and let me know where you are you in your business growth?
The 8 Secrets To Small Business Growth
After 25 years building my own businesses and working with hundreds of consultancy clients to build theirs, there are 8 secrets that I have seen work time and time again and these are what I will focus on below.
- Secret #1 – Go Be Remarkable
- Secret #2 – Be a Specialist
- Secret #3 – Strategy First
- Secret #4 – Attract A Talented Team
- Secret #5 – Build A Lead Machine
- Secret #6 – Be Human, Holistic & Helpful
- Secret #7 – Systemise Before You Optimise
- Secret #8 – Leverage Technology For Growth
Secret #1 - Go Be Remarkable
I want you to stop for a minute and ask yourself honestly “How remarkable is my business?” – If you have read my book “Remarkable Business Growth” you will know why I start with this.
Think about every touchpoint you have with your prospects, your leads, your customers, your partners and even your team. How remarkable is your website? How remarkable is your printed material? How remarkable is your core product? How many of these leave people going “wow”?
Being remarkable is a critical decision you need to make, as it will become a key differentiator between you and the competition. Put simply, when you get this right, you will stand apart from everyone else and have a huge competitive advantage. So Go Be Remarkable.
Secret #2 – Be A Specialist
You must become a specialist and not a generalist. Understanding who your “best fit” customer is and knowing them better than they know themselves is a key trait of a remarkable small business.
If you focus on dominating a niche or sector, becoming the thought-leader and expert for that sector you will become the go-to business. The power of this is that you will never be competing on price ever again. You will have people queuing up to work with you and you will grow a profitable business. However if you remain a generalist, you will always be seen as a “jack of all trades” and judged on price.
Secret #3 - Strategy First
If you have watched any of my videos, read my blog posts or my book, you will know my mantra “Strategy drives tactics” – Every successful business I have helped grow has started by mapping out a detailed growth strategy first and then letting the strategy drive daily tactical execution.
Your strategy drives what KPI’s you are measuring, nothing happens in a day without a reason and your strategy will bring cystal clarity to everything you are doing and why you are doing it.
I want you to take the time to sit down and spend at least 3 months planning out your growth strategy and to help I have written another guide on the 12 elements you need to work on in your strategy. Download that here – The Remarkable Growth Strategy
The Remarkable Business Growth Strategy
Strategy drives tactics. When you have a remarkable growth strategy in place, everything you do and execute on a daily basis is driven by that strategy. In this incredible guide Richard Mawer, the CEO and Founder of Ignite Growth Consultancy and author of the Amazon #1 best selling book “Remarkable Business Growth” shares the 12 elements that are pivotal when you create the growth strategy for your business.
Secret #4 – Attract A Talented Team
If you have been running your business for a number of years, you will probably have started to build out the team around you. You may have 3 – 4 employees, or yourself and a business partner plus a couple of others.
My philosophy on building out a team has been to focus on attracting the very best A-players to each of the key positions you need to fill. In my experience spending a bit more money to get the best person for a role, will always pay you back many times over. An A-player will give you 150% at all times, they will think strategically about their role and constantly improve the results they generate for you and your business. This will make your business growth far more predictable and most importantly release you to do more important strategic work on the business.
Secret #5 - Build A Lead Machine
You will now see the benefit of doing your Sales Plan first, as this should give you clear Marketing goals around how many leads you need to generate to hit your revenue goals. You should have in place a conversion optimised sales process that will convert at a minimum of 25% and now is the time to add targeted leads into your funnel.
Your focus will be on 3 – 5 core lead / traffic sources and optimising these in your marketing campaigns to create a “lead machine”. You are aiming to attract and engage your “good fit” target audience with valuable content, once engaged they will move seamlessly through your sales process to becoming a customer.
Your lead machine will drive warm leads into your funnel day and night, so spend the time to get this right.
Secret #6 – Be Human, Holistic & Helpful
Now your lead machine is in place and driving predictable leads into your business on a daily basis, it is vital that you connect and engage with these leads in a human. holistic and helpful way.
Your sales process and pipeline needs to nurture relationships with your leads, build trust and authority by answering the questions that your leads will have. By being helpful and giving them the answers to their questions, you will start a very natural sales conversation and help them to make the right decision for them. Sales in no longer about ABC “always be closing” it is now ABH “always be helping” – make sure this is your philosophy and you will not go far wrong.
Secret #7 - Systemise Before You Optimise
Have you built out processes for everything you do in your business?
I would say 70% of the businesses I work with struggle with this, they may have a few processes around operational delivery but when I look at the rest of the business, there are no processes and systems in place for how the business runs.
The challenge here is that without a process, you have nothing consistent to measure and without accurate measurement you can not hope to optimise and improve something.
So sit down and start identifying areas you can process out in your own business. This is also the secret to releasing yourself from the business and training new team members to do things the way you do it, then improve on it.
Secret #8 – Leverage Technology For Scale
The final piece of the puzzle is systems and technology. You must leverage modern technology to allow you to scale and grow your business effectively. Your goal here is to build a connected system of software, tools and technology that gives you a single source of truth that you can relay on.
Your system must be easy to use, so everyone in your business is keeping the data up to date and accurate. You will then be able to measure everything and rely on the data in your dashboards and reports, to tell you exactly what is working, what is not working and what can be improved. You are enabling data driven decision making to replace opinion, once you achieve this, you will never look back.
The Ultimate Guide To Small Business Growth
Grab your free copy of this incredible free guide in which Richard Mawer, the CEO and Founder of Ignite Growth and Author of the Amazon #1 Best Selling “Remarkable Business Growth” shares the 8 secrets to growing your small business to £1m turnover and beyond.
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