Get Growing
There’s no hiding from the fact that many business owners have experienced a gloomy winter so far: interest rate hikes are biting as hard as nasty north-easterly gales, and skills shortages and the spectre of inflation have been enough to dampen down whatever cheer has been left after the gongs and fireworks of new year celebrations.
Except for small and micro businesses. When the going gets tough...you know the rest. And it is one of the most salient skills of tiny businesses that they can float when others sink, they can navigate storms when others get lost and they can innovate and grow their businesses while others hold on by their fingertips to the life raft of what they know.
Small businesses do this out of sheer necessity and being small, more often than not you can be flexible. You can be versatile with your range of product. You can read your customers and their changing buying patterns that much more readily. You may well not be tethered down by an office space that is pushing your costs up, or staffing costs that you are struggling to afford (and if you are, you might want to drop us a note and see what we can do for you to keep your order books full without adding to the cost of premises).
But for most small businesses, especially if you are a very small enterprise, facing tough times can be daunting, and adding the idea of growth into the mix might go against the grain. Growth means financing, changing, restructuring, business loans, countless administrative tasks...or does it? How can going for growth in tough times work for tiny businesses?
Let’s start by taking the view that if you’re having it hard, so is pretty much everyone else. Unless you’re a hugely cash rich business, your comfort cushion is probably as thin as everyone else’s. So, take a long hard look at the competition. What are they up to? What are they offering customers and what might lead your customers to stray in their direction? Lower prices perhaps, but customers, even in these tough market conditions, are motivated as much by knowledge and by their desire for the right fit for their needs as they are by price. People have learned a good deal about value these days: they will part with their money for the right fit of product.
So next, take a long hard look at your customers and at your market overall. What do they seem to be buying? What are they saying about your products or services? Engage with them, strike up conversations with them, become one to know one. If you are offering a particular product, go out there and buy one from your competitors. What does it feel like as a customer to do this, and how can you fill in any gaps or do it better for your customer?
Then dream up the new product, or new service – is there something you can do to add value to what you offer your customer that will have them dig into their purses that little bit deeper because they simply cannot bring themselves to say ‘no’? Is there something new or different that you can do to make your business completely irresistible? And dreaming is the key word; it never ceases to amaze us how many clients come up with phrases like ‘I thought of this when I was out on my morning run / walking the dog / having a nap / washing the dishes...’ Allow yourself to mull, ruminate, ponder and the ideas will come, you’ll get that little tickle of excitement in your gut and you will know you’re onto a winner.
Then, inevitably, you’ll have to do all that businessy stuff: market research, cost planning and budgeting, maybe get some training, reworking your marketing plan, review the regulations to make sure what you are doing is ok to do, and so on. But you’ll be doing it with a sense of excitement that you are riding the waves and not allowing them to overwhelm you. And being a successful business person is part expertise and part passion.
The start of the year is always good for reviewing the old and introducing the new. It is a time for optimism and looking out for the light at the end of the tunnel. Small businesses spark their own lights and don’t wait for others to shine the torch for them. Go for growth in 2024 and as you start a successful 2025, check in with us and tell us how you got on. Or better still, check in with us now and find out how we might help you get growing.