Growth should be a priority within the first 5 to 10 years of a business. After all It is what drives profit and makes you competitive with similar businesses in your industry. However, growth doesn’t happen just by working hard. Like most goals, you need a strategic plan, complete with KPIs and benchmarks along the way. Here are three ways that I found effective not just for mapping out growth goals, but actually achieving them:
1. Define what business growth means to you
Before you can map out a strategy for growth, you need to decide on your own personal definition of growth. The meaning of growth is not universal for every business. Your company is unique and is more positioned to hit certain growth goals over others.
However, it does no harm to take inspiration from high-performing competitors. Examine the growth goals of other businesses in your industry, and consider how well they might overlap with your business. Be careful, though—I can guarantee that simply swiping the growth goals of one of your competitors is not going to work out very well for you. You need to adjust it to make it a realistic goal for your company. Otherwise, you are setting yourself up to fail.
2. Align your strategy and business goals
Consider and potentially resolidify how you define success for your business. What KPI’s matter to you? What objectives do you want to accomplish on your given timetable? These could include profitability, number of clients, number of repeat customers, social media metrics or whatever benchmarks you feel are indicators of a job well done.
If some time has passed since your growth strategy was set in place, evaluate your progress to achieving these business goals. Your growth strategy is there to help you deliver on these and scale part or all of your business accordingly. If your business goals and your plan to succeed at those goals aren’t aligned, you are inevitably going to fail at them.
3. Get your team involved
Your team is the most effective tool you have to help you achieve your business growth goals. Keep your team involved in your decisions, and have frequent touchpoints at the beginning of the process, allowing them to provide you with valuable feedback and insight into daily tasks that could help or slow down the progress of established goals.
If you are able, establish the goals with their input. Coming up with them together not only gives you added brainpower when mapping out success, but it gives you insight into what your team thinks are important growth goals and what they feel they are capable of achieving.
