Progression is almost always a stumbling block in one way or another for businesses, either because they don’t know exactly how to move to the next level or they believe it will happen naturally – something that although essentially true, very often requires a helping hand.
One of the most difficult progression periods for many is the movement from being a one-person outfit to a small business and although not comprehensive, these three points should provide you with a good starting point for making the transition.
1. Start networking whenever and wherever possible
Often the downfall of many one-person outfits and small business owners, networking, whether carried out in the traditional manner at dedicated networking events or through the use of social media, is vastly important to the development and progression to a small – or even medium – business.
Contacts are everything in the business world and if you’ve got an address book full of useful names and numbers, it will help tremendously in a variety of ways, including with most aspects within the following point.
2. Increase, increase, increase
Customer base. Order size. Market share. Product sales. Service prices. Every aspect of your business needs to be developed and improved upon at the same time, all of which should follow the same basic principle of being increased.
It’s a simple point, but if you can put a structured plan into place to gradually, for example, increase your wholesale order by 10% every three months and see your website traffic grow by 15% every month, you’re without doubt on the right track to a bigger and better business.
3. Don’t be afraid to take a chance
While you should never take a chance in business that is going to jeopardise everything you’ve worked to develop to date, there are certain opportunities that present themselves which could prove to be fantastically beneficial.
Whenever such chances become apparent, you need to be certain that before disregarding them for the safer option, you look at all factors involved and determine how much of a positive and negative impact they could have and what the chances are of either occurring.
And if it proves that there is in fact little chance of there being a negative outcome, but a huge possibility of it being positive, it would be worthwhile looking into the opportunity further, as it could help you progress and develop tremendously.
Every one-person outfit is different in the way that they think, but the general consensus is that most want to grow and expand, something that the information here should help you with, irrelevant of how confident or business-minded you currently are.
