Improve your business growth strategy by falling back in love with your business

We at Pro-actions are often reminded that many smaller businesses have owners that have fallen out of love with their businesses.

Our experienced advisors often meet hard-pressed business owners that have lost the passion for their business. The vision and drive that created the business have been tarnished. Or in some cases replaced completely by the daily grind.

Our experts will help you to understand how loving your company is the key to business growth. With a better business strategy in place, you can rejuvenate your love for your company and achieve success. 

Most businesses are established with the owner’s exciting prospects of taking an idea or their individual past experience and starting their own company. Excitement then builds, the energy levels are massive, the company starts and things are great.

However, getting a business established and growing is hard work and the reward isn’t always evident. The reality of what they have achieved can often lead to feelings that are quite the opposite of what they thought would be the case….. the opposite of the dream!

The feelings of “It hasn’t worked out as I thought”. “I feel stuck”. “How do I take this to the next level as I hoped?” Or even “How do I get out of this?” are where we see the signs that the owner(s) has fallen out of love

Falling back in love with your business

At this stage what needs to be addressed is the creation of a critical path of how it will be possible for you, the owner, to fall back in love with your business. How you can find the energy levels again and change your nervous distressing butterflies into excitement butterflies.

However, the way to re-energise does involve a step back to enable matters to start to STRIDE forward. To go backwards and revisit your DREAM, VISION, PURPOSE and MISSION is the start point. There is also a need to write this down and make sure that these elements are crystal clear and SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time framed). At this stage there is also a recommendation that these elements should also align with the owner’s personal life goals (if they are known?

A winning business strategy

From here, it’s all about finding out why the business has got stuck and devising an ingenious plan….a strategy which is going to win and getting some outside help at this stage is often advisable to give an objective view point. Then once the plan and strategy are devised and written down this most often puts that “spark back” into the owner’s energy levels and the heartbeat back into the business.

Now it’s about the reality of learning and getting better knowledge and skills and having a FOCUS around what to learn, how, why and when is essential. But the energy levels are back, the owners start to care more and there is desire.

In our view there are 9 very key areas of business (see below) that skills, beliefs and knowledge should build within. BUT the syntax (order) in which the focused learning should take place is very individual. Again, advice should be sought over the right order of learning for results to build quickly.

Commitment to continuous learning is a must for any business leader. This is especially relevant to the SME market as is acceptance that we should not wish that “things were better”. But wish that “I am better” and act on this.

We must accept that we have to care for and nurture our business, learn along the way and treat our own business in the way we would hope to treat our very best customers. Only then can we then tread a path of never-ending improvement and begin to make things happen.

To care, we must adopt the following 9 key areas as a start point to continuous learning:

 

1. Strategy – develop a winning one 
2. Marketing – how to get the right customers talking to you
3. Sales – develop a winning sales process
4. Profit – this is where cash comes from
5. Cash – raise it, create more of it, manage it and USE it
6. Team – your biggest resource, so care and develop it – this is key!
7. Systems – how will it work when you are not there?
8. Time – biggest asset. Do the right things for the right reasons at the right time
9. Leadership – what it takes to get people to follow you

Seeking an external steer to help you achieve business growth

If you’re under pressure and out of love with the business, you may to be too close to see the wood for the trees. Putting a business growth strategy in place when you don’t know what needs fixing won’t be easy.

If you are unsure about where your strengths and weaknesses lie, or where your business might be stuck, then we recommend taking our free online Business Health Assessment. The 5-minute test will assess the key areas of your business and the issues you may be facing. It will give you some immediate guidance into your areas of weakness, and key recommendations about how you can improve.

If you then want to follow-up with a free 2-hour one-to-one advisory session, an expert advisor will be happy to speak to you about your specific goals and challenges.

Getting an objective external view point throughout the process can be very valuable in crystallising the vision, diagnosing the problem, helping you create the plan and then holding you to account as the plan is implemented.

To discuss any of the above with one of our business advisors, or book a free consultation, please call 03333 440517 or email us: enquiries@pro-actions.com.