
Get ready for growth
Are you ready to take your business to the next level? We've put together some advice to help you grow your business.
Are you ready to take your business to the next level? We've put together some advice to help you grow your business.
The first step is becoming aware of your options. Depending on your business type, there are a number of different ways you can create growth:
You should analyse each of these areas separately, so you can go through your options within each of them. Initially, you should consider every possible option and should not focus too much on limiting factors such as resources, etc.
This initial exercise gives you a starting point to prioritize your efforts.
Now we move from thought to action. You must lay down a concrete plan for your further work to create growth. You do this by breaking down the various selected initiatives into action points.
This means that for each initiative you must identify all the steps you need to take to qualify or implement it. Next, you should set deadlines for completing the first step of each initiative. You have to put some pressure on yourself. That way, you keep your momentum and ensure that the whole process does not become a desktop exercise without any action.
Meanwhile, you must also create a realistic budget for how your growth plan will affect your company's finances. Just like the content of the plan itself, you must keep track of the budget and make sure you stay within the limits you've set.
Growth generation often requires investment. Therefore, the first step is to ensure that you have enough funding to implement your plans.
Once your process is in place, there are a number of options for financing your growth strategy. They include:
To start talking with interested investors and other stakeholders, you need a well-developed pitch that will make your business plan look attractive.
As a bank, we have a lot of experience helping companies like yours grow. Take advantage of our skills to test your growth strategy and find the right financing solution.
In the best-selling professional book "From Good to Great" one of the first tips is to put together the right team. You may also need to do this if you want to succeed in creating growth. New initiatives can often require the types of skills your business may not have.
If that's the case, consider how to best get the right skills for your business. Should you hire someone on a fixed contract, get a job, hire a group of experts, or should you try to find an external partner? It will depend entirely on your situation, industry and business.
Learn from the start-up mentality
Successful start-up companies are often quick to try new initiatives and then evaluate and possibly change them. In this way they are able to act faster and more smoothly than established companies. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg summed up the approach in the phrase "Move fast and break things", which for several years served as a mantra for the company.
This approach can give you a quicker indication of whether you are on the right track than if you were to take slow, detailed steps and then find out that you were wrong. Therefore, it could make sense to work fast, even if you have a company with years of experience. Obviously, however, individual actions do not pose significant risks to your business.
Once you’ve collected the data, you begin your evaluation. Here are a number of questions you can use as a basis for it:
A variety of options is available when your business needs financing. You can read more about them here.
Cash flow and liquidity management, overview and control, sharp processes.
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