Inevitably, your business will, at some point, encounter an inflection point. This is an event resulting in a significant change to your company’s progress, which can be either positive or negative. A common inflection point for most businesses is when they stop growing.
When your company stops growing, you need to make changes. Learn about what you can do to start up your business’s growth again.
Monitor KPIs
If your business has stopped growing and you don’t know why, that in itself might be a sign that you need more information and have not been monitoring the correct key performance indicators (KPI). KPIs are goals you should track to achieve the best results with your business strategy.
An obvious one is your sales revenue, but have you been tracking customer loyalty and retention? Repeat customers spend more money and promote your business. It also costs 5 times more to bring in new customers than it does to retain them, which makes repeat customers more a lot more valuable.
Do you monitor employee happiness? Happy employees are productive employees. If they are happy with their work, they are more likely to form a long-term commitment to it and are less likely to leave.
There are many KPIs. What is important is that you track the KPIs that are relevant to your business. The best practice is to identify the metrics your competitors are most worried about and use them in your own analyses. Just be careful not to limit yourself to this. Observe your stakeholders and their needs so you can adjust your KPIs as needed.
Hire an Advisor
Sometimes, you need a third-party perspective. By availing of a business advisor’s services, you can get expert knowledge from someone that has had experience with other businesses that were in the same position as yours.
They will be able to identify business opportunities or flaws in your strategies that you fail to notice. They might suggest you open more locations, form partnerships, create an e-commerce shop, or diversify your product line.
Take your time when hiring a business advisor. Interview a few and hire one that specializes in what you need and has a compatible strategy. Also, make sure to ask business advisors for their credentials and that they are fiduciaries. A fiduciary is ethically and legally bound to put their clients’ best interests ahead of their own. This is important in ensuring that the one you hire is one you can trust.
Nurture Proactivity
Are your people waiting to be told what to do, have stopped learning, are apathetic to their work, or are no longer taking risks? These are signs that your employees have grown complacent and are not proactive. The core of your company is your employees, and their attitude is a major factor in determining whether your company is on the path to growth.
Proactive employees are more productive, more efficient, and plan for the future. They give ideas and provide insight, adding to a team’s quality rather than just the amount of work it can do. Set short, mid, and long-term goals, and communicate them to the whole organization. Afterward, encourage employees to share ideas. Reward those that show a problem-solving attitude.
Perhaps your employees are in need of leadership training. Effective leaders can encourage their team to voice their ideas and empower them to take the initiative and try new things. This is a big boost to your company’s productivity and, more importantly, a step towards creating a healthy, proactive company culture.
Hire Experts or Outsource Projects
Get to know what your employees do on a regular basis, and you might find that they are taking on too many responsibilities. This is not just detrimental to individual employees but to the organization as a whole. An expert could be doing it better.
If you’re a business owner, you are presumably a business expert. If you’re making executive decisions that are affecting the whole company’s direction, you will need experts in other fields to advise you.
You will need an expert to handle HR-related issues. Your marketing department should be filled with marketing experts. You might even need your own legal team. If you or your people cannot do something as well as an expert can then get an expert. It is that simple.
Other than hiring, outsourcing is also a great option. Regardless of how big your business is, you will still need business partners that specialize in providing other services.
If your employees do not specialize in digital marketing, for example, outsourcing your social media campaign might be more profitable than hiring digital marketers. After all, a digital marketing agency will know how to do it better, and your business might not need a dedicated team for it.
Formulate a strategy that will work for you. There’s no one way to grow a business and no one reason a business stops growing. You need to figure out your options and choose the one that best fits your goals, brand, and customers.
