Listen to a message from Howard about growing your business:
Do you want to grow your business?
Have you ever met a CEO, president or business owner that didn’t want to grow their business?????
It’s such an easy statement to make:
“I want to grow my business”.
Or…
“I want to make my business bigger”.
Do you really want to do that?
If so…
Have you thought through what it takes to grow your business?
I mean…
Really think it through.
Such as:
- What are the physical needs to grow your business?
- How much more prospecting is needed to grow your business?
- How much more customer service to grow your business?
- Will you need more office space, more computers, more phone lines to grow your business?
- How best to position the marketing to grow your business?
- Is now the right time to grow your business?
- How can you capitalize on your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses to grow your business?
- How do you overcome the weaknesses of your company to grow your business?
- What is the timeline to grow your business?
- What is your plan to grow your business?
- What do you need to do to actually grow your business… and be profitable?
The last question on the list is the most important question. Here’s why:
There will be an increase in costs and expenses to grow your business.
- Will growth increase your profits? Or will it cost you more money to the point where you are losing money?
I always recommend when CEOs, presidents and business owners talk to me about growing their business that they look at what they are currently doing.
- Can the business be increased without increasing expenses?
- Can the prospecting be improved?
- Can the marketing be improved?
- Is there capacity to do more work, more sales, more production and delivery than currently being done? If so, start here before adding more to your business.
Once you do that, once you’ve analyzed what you’re currently doing, once you’ve seen how you can internally grow your business without additional major cost, then ask yourself:
What’s next?
To do everything you want to do, will you:
- Have the necessary cash flow?
- Will you need more money?
- If you need more money, where will you get the cash flow?
- What’s it going to cost you, in the short term and long term?
Interest rates may be low today but certainly they will eventually be going back up. The current projection is that interest rates may begin to rise in the next year. If interest rates go up, that will need to be included in the cost projections.
As you can see, just saying: “I am going to grow my business” is just words.
What’s the plan?
What is it going to take?
Do you and your company have what it takes?
If you don’t, how are you going to achieve business growth?
Before you think about moving forward, sit down and think about it.
Through good thinking, you can get a good understanding of whatever you’re trying to accomplish. It will help you get to where you want to be. The last thing you want is to go backwards with your business.
There’s an old saying:
“Lose a nickel on every unit but make it up in volume”.
Some business people really believe that.
Some business people really believe that even if they’re not making money on something because they do volume, they’re okay.
But they’re NOT okay!
What happens is that they lose more money.
Because the cash flow is coming in, because there is money coming in, they may not even know it. They may not even be aware of it for a significant period of time until it’s too late, until they’re so far in debt that it’s hard to dig out. You don’t want that to happen to your business, do you?
Grow your business.
Grow it internally first with what you have.
Make sure you’re stretched as far as you can with the resources you have. Do more business. Then, and only then, add onto your business. When you do, know where the breakeven point is. Know how much more business you’re going to need to do in order to grow…. and be profitable.
Then think: If a salesperson, for example, is added what is the new salesperson going to cost in dollars and how much more business do you need to bring in each month to pay for that new salesperson and the expenses associated with the new employee.
It’s always about understanding what needs to be done. Then putting it into action to grow your business.
Have a question about how to grow your business? If you are a CEO, president or business owner, just ask Howard! Call Howard directly at 888-738-1855 or connect with Howard on LinkedIn.