How to take your business to the next level

7 Tips To Take Your Blackpool Business to the Next Level

Your business is ticking along nicely, but what if it could do so much more than that?

Launching a business is one thing. Yet businesses have a habit of taking on a life of their own. Sometimes it almost feels as though businesses want to grow. The question is, how do set the direction of that growth, and how do you stay in control?

There’s an almost infinite number of ways to take your Blackpool business to the next level, but here are some key steps.

1. Set some goals

If you don’t know where you’re heading, how will you know when you get there? Studies  show that people who set goals are more likely to achieve them than those who don’t. You need to write your growth strategy down (because that increases the chance of success by 33% compared to keeping your goals in your head). They also need to be a certain type of goal. Rather than a woolly, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if…?’ sort of goal, make your goals SMART. That is:

• Specific: Choose clear, strong, well-defined goals
• Measurable: Choose a goal whose outcome you can measure. That might be more sales, more new customers, more returning customers, more conversions etc
• Achievable: Choose a goal that’s a bit of a stretch (otherwise it’s not much of a goal) but let’s keep it realistic
• Relevant: Ensure the goal serves a genuine purpose in your business. Any goal that will help increase profit, cut costs or grow customer satisfaction is likely to do that
• Time-bound: Give your goal a deadline, otherwise things can drift  

2. Focus on your customers

Your customers can tell you a lot about how your business is doing – and where it should go next. Naturally, they do that by choosing to spend money with you. But they help you grow your business in lots of other ways too:

• Their reviews can help identify the great things you do that you can build on, and the issues to fix
• Their requests can help you diversify. Do you find you’re always getting asked about whether you offer a certain product or service? Consider adding it to your offering 
• Have a healthy mailing list of loyal customers? Why not offer an incentive for them to recommend you to others?
• Have you found custom starting to drop off, perhaps in favour of a competitor? What do you know about your customers (and your competitor) that could help win them back?     
  
  

3. Seek mentors and advisors

The tricky thing about growing your business is that, until you’ve done it, you’re never quite sure whether you’re heading in the right direction. A business growth mentor will have experience scaling business. They’ll know what works, and they’ll know the pitfalls. 

Working with a mentor can give your fresh ideas and perspectives, and the confidence to know you’re on the right track.

4. Revisit your business plan (or create your first one!)

If you spoke with Blackpool Unlimited ahead of launching your business, you’ll know just how important a good business plan can be. If you haven’t got a business plan yet and you want to grow, now is definitely the time to get it sorted.

The process of writing a business plan helps you spot the new opportunities and challenges that face your business and will inform your growth strategy. It can help you better understand your strengths and weaknesses and help you set your own development targets.

Perhaps even more importantly for a growing company, a business plan will be absolutely essential if you are:

• Seeking to grow through investment, because any investor will want to see a well thought-through plan
• Planning to grow through technology, because a business plan will be key to ensuring your investment in tech is laser focused and delivers value for money
• Planning to grow through marketing, because a business plan can help define what you need your marketing to achieve; and
• Thinking of working with an advisor or mentor, because your business plan will be one of the first things your mentor asks to see

5. Network 

When you launched your business, networking was a great way to get yourself known and spread the word about your new venture. Now’s not the time to stop!

A growing business can also benefit from the connections you make and the relationships you build when networking, although you may want to explore new networking groups more appropriate to your current stage of business.

6. Measure your success

One of the elements of goal setting we mentioned earlier was ‘measurable’. If you set measurable goals, you’ll be able to use the data you get back to understand how well your strategy is performing. When you know that, you can decide what tweaks and changes you need to put in place to improve things further. 

7. Stay flexible 

Things change. Things will always change. Often, the businesses best able to adapt quickly will be the ones that thrive. So whatever growth strategy you adopt, never lock yourself into a set of goals so tightly that you can’t pivot when needed.

Grow your business with Blackpool Unlimited 

Whatever goals are on your business growth to-do list, Blackpool Unlimited can help. Whether it’s new, larger office space, finance guides or general growth advice, to take your Blackpool business to the next level, talk to us.