A small business may operate on a small scale, but you can learn how to grow a small business fast to create a big impact.
When you have an idea for a small business, you don’t have to let the scale of the venture limit your ambitions. In fact, many small businesses grow into large businesses over time.
But in order to get there, you will need to take some steps along the way.
To begin with, no new business venture succeeds unless it is founded on a solid foundation of knowledge and preparedness. The same is true for growing any business from small to big.
There are common challenges faced by all entrepreneurs at every stage of growth. In this article, we will share with you 7 general ways in which you can grow your business and 1 specific plan you can apply in the next 3 months to grow your business fast.
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How Do Small Businesses Become Big?
The government of the United States uses revenue and the number of employees to define what a small business is. These Small Business Administration standards will be slightly different depending on the industry.
Examples:
- For Construction Sand and Gravel Mining less than 500 employees is small but in Tire Manufacturing less than 1,500 employees is small
- For Office Supplies and Stationery Stores $35 million in revenue is small but for Motor Vehicle Towing $8 million in revenue is small
As you can see, the group of businesses that are considered “small businesses” is not a homogenous group.
Yet, we can state that for a small business to become big they have to increase their revenue, their employee count, or both, above certain standards in their industry.
In this article, we will focus on how to grow a small business fast in terms of revenue.
How Fast Should a Small Business Grow?
This one is tricky as well because it’s one thing to grow a business fast and it’s another thing to have a small business that is growing fast.
You could have a business that is growing fast because they’ve been investing in demand generation for the past 12-24 months and now they are seeing the return on that investment.
Or you could have a small business that started recently, or lost a few clients and is in desperate need of fast revenue growth to keep the lights on.
In this article, we will focus on the second scenario, how to grow your business fast from scratch.
It is also important to highlight the fact that fast growth can be achieved in many ways. The two main ways in which a business can grow are:
- Selling more products and services
- Increasing the price of the products and services you are selling
Without further ado, here are 7 ideas to grow your business.
7 Ideas On How to Grow a Small Business Fast
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Network and get to know your market
Networking is the best way to learn about your customers’ needs and challenges and to find out what makes them buy your product or service.
Getting out and meeting people is particularly important if you are part of a niche or emerging industry, where networking can help you build relationships with people who have been involved in your field for a long time. This is particularly important if your business operates in a market with high barriers to entry, such as finance or health care.
In these fields, you may find that there are few companies that operate in the same way as you do. You may find it useful to team up with other people trying to do something similar to you to share knowledge and expertise that can help you all succeed.
Provide exceptional customer service
For as long as you can remember, customers have been king. They determine the success of businesses and their reputations.
As a small-business owner, you can’t afford to ignore this fact. You need to be sure that you are providing the best customer service possible. This means offering prompt, friendly, and helpful responses to questions and orders. It means having friendly, helpful employees available to talk to customers on the phone.
It means following up with every customer, whether they came to your business in person, online, or over the phone. In order to provide excellent customer service and retain your customers, you need to know your customers well. You need to be able to anticipate their needs so that you can better serve them.
Ask for referrals
It’s not enough to satisfy your current customers—if you want your business to grow, you have to win over new customers.
This is where referrals come in. Many customers are happy to refer your service to others, and will do so if you ask them. You can increase your chances of receiving referrals by providing excellent customer service. Once you have received a few referrals, you should also make sure that you follow up with the people who were referred to you.
Be sure to thank them, and follow up with their friends or colleagues who were referred to you. This will show them that you value their recommendations and that they will be treated with the same respect and care as existing customers.
Your business will also have an easier time growing if you have a referral program in place. Make it easy for customers to refer your products or services to others. Make it easy for them to get rewarded for doing so.
Incorporate automation where possible
Your business will benefit from automation wherever possible. This could include automation of your marketing efforts, accounting practices, and inventory management.
As your business grows, you will find yourself having to do more of the same tasks over and over again. This can lead to inefficiency and frustration. Automating your work can help to avoid this problem. Automating your marketing efforts can save you a lot of time.
For example, you can set up autoresponders for your emails so that you don’t have to manually send out marketing emails to each and every person who visits your website or signs up for your email list. You can also use software to schedule social media posts, instead of having to do all your posting manually.
Paid promotions
Paid advertising is one of the best ways to reach a lot of people quickly and at relatively low cost. You can use paid advertising to help your business gain more customers.
You should do this when you have identified the right target market and have a product or service that they will find useful. Advertise on social networks like Facebook and Instagram. You can also advertise with Google AdWords or Bing Ads. You can also use paid advertising to improve your ranking in search engine results.
This will help you become more visible to potential customers who are looking for products and services like yours.
Social Media and Content Marketing
This is a marketing strategy that uses content such as blog posts, images, and videos to attract customers to your business and keep them coming back.
Content marketing can be a cost-effective way for small businesses to reach potential customers. You can either create your own content or pay someone to do it for you.
There are many social media platforms where you can post your content. Most of these platforms also allow you to target your ads to specific audiences. This can help you get in front of the right customers.
Monitor the performance of everything constantly
You should always be looking for ways to measure the success of your business. This is the only way to tell if your efforts are paying off.
It’s also the only way to know what needs to change if they aren’t. Whether you are measuring the growth of your customer base, the amount of time it takes to complete an average task, or the amount of money you have left in your budget each month, keeping close track of your progress is essential.
To measure, you may need to create a plan for assessing your business, including the things you hope to measure, how often you need to measure them, and who will be responsible for overseeing their accuracy.
How Can I Grow My Business In 3 Months?
As a personal branding consultant, you might think that I’d recommend you to invest in a personal brand to grow your business in 3 months.
But that is not the case. I’d actually recommend you to not think about building a personal brand until you have enough revenue to pay your bill and get your head above the water.
I hate chasing leads and clients, which is why we believe in building a personal brand that attracts your ideal clients. But if I had to make money quickly to pay the bills, I will actually focus on outbound.
I would go out and hunt.
And the best way to do that nowadays is to do it online. Especially on LinkedIn if you are selling professional services.
Without having to leave your house, you can leverage this social media platform to find and network with your ideal clients. But before you start doing so, make sure you are not just reaching out to people to pitch your products and services right away.
There is a better way to book sales calls and fill your pipeline via LinkedIn. I learned this thanks to Candyce Edelen. She reached out to me via DM on LinkedIn in one of the most mindful ways I’ve ever seen.
That sparked a conversation that ended up in a great professional relationship and I’ve been able to connect with ideal clients and have great podcasts guests by using her methodology.
You can learn more about her methodology in this short video that covers the 3 key aspects to improve your sales through LinkedIn.
You can also watch the complete podcast episode with Candyce here (and there is a second episode coming soon).
And if you want to take the next step and grow your business in the next 3 months, I’d recommend checking out her Prospecting Mastery program.
PropelGrowth’s Prospecting Mastery teaches you how to consistently book meetings with your ideal prospects.
It is a proven system for generating qualified leads using LinkedIn. In this course, PropelGrowth teaches solopreneurs, business owners and sales teams how to reliably and predictably generate qualified sales leads.
This 14-module course is available on-demand.
Here’s a summary of how Candyce was able to make $438,000 in 6 months as a 2-person business:
Next Steps to Grow Your Business
Growing a small business into a large one is no easy task. These 7 ways to grow your small business are just the beginning. There are many challenges that every business owner will face along the way.
It’s important to be prepared for these challenges and to be ready to overcome them when they arise.
You will also face many opportunities to grow and expand your business. You may even be faced with the choice of whether to grow your business or not.
Even if you have no intention of growing your business beyond a certain point, it’s important to be aware of these opportunities.
You never know when they might help you advance your career or expand your earning potential in some other way.
