How to grow and look ahead for your business
In today’s business environment where everything relies heavily on the market, it is imperative to have sustainable growth and profitability. Even though it is the case, that is almost never a guarantee. With technological advancements, new competitors and an ever shifting market, the lifespan of products and services will be shortened. This instability is why as a business owner, you would have to, constantly ask yourself questions, search for new market opportunities for growth, know how to filter them and overall do what’s best for your business.
- Listen to yourself
First of all, you have to know your business inside and out. Many tend to overlook this. To search for new business opportunities it is necessary to know your company’s direction, goals, strengths, weaknesses, resources and capabilities. By knowing what you have, you then have a better understanding of what you are putting out there. “Hey, I know we can do this.” “We have to do this, everyone needs it.” As they once said, once you have a good understanding of yourself then only you can reach out and help others. This establishes a good motivation and drive for yourself as well.
2. Listen to the consumer
Secondly, understand your consumer. By understanding your consumer, you will be able to segment them out into sharing common characteristics. These characteristics include demographics such as, age, gender place of residence, educational level, occupation and level of income. As well as psychographics, such as lifestyle, attitude, values, morals and purchasing motivations.
Do your consumer research and fit them all into one single “persona”. A persona is a physical manifestation of all demographics and psychographics together. Once there is this “persona”, segmentation, it helps estimate the number of potential customers a business can have. You can even have your customer journey mapped out, getting in depth on the user experience as they buy or use your product or service.
One fun tip is to talk to your customers. Banter, form good relationships and understand them and their motivations or perceptions of your product or service a little bit better. Good communication and relationship building is always plus point for your business as it keeps you involved and down to earth.
3. Listen to the market
Many people love to put forth what they want and what they love. But does the market love it all the same? When do people use or buy our products and service? Why do they need it? What do they need at this point of time? How do our values coincide with them? Say, people like leather sofas more, rather than fabric because it is easier to be cleaned and lasts a longer time and you as a sofa manufacturer, value long lasting, stable furniture, So, listen to them and manufacture or offer products or services to cater to them.
Knowing what the people want, when they want it, why they want it is imperative in clinching good business opportunities. If there are gaps for you to fill in, if they need something that might not be in the market, like a storage bed, it is a good time for your business to take the opportunity to expand and look into that.
Furthermore, look into the future and observe trends. What is changing? How will my customer’s mindsets change over time? What will they need 5 years down the road? Be forward-thinking and stay ready for the future so you will not be affected by bad economy periods. Constantly do market research, it isn’t a one-off thing since the market is constantly changing. It is all about being progressive instead of staying stagnant in your business.
4. Filter out opportunities
Once you become established enough so that opportunities are coming to you instead, as a business owner you always have to do what is best for your business at that point of time. For start-ups everything looks shiny, every opportunity seems like a solitary gem. However, weigh out certain decisions. Evaluate each opportunity by profit potential, feasibility, degree of risk and time to delivery. Maybe, you would rather use that time to develop your product or services to cater more to the consumer market, so that you can constantly be providing upgrades or improvements. It is easy to get carried away by chasing certain ventures and forget what you are doing internally, or how you can improve.
