When it comes to business there is never any one guaranteed path that you can follow to success, but you can vastly increase your chances of growing your company as quickly as possible by following these important startup tips…
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Hire the best employees
It should almost go without saying that the foundation of a successful business is the people who work in that business. That is why it is so important if you want to grow your company as swiftly as possible, that you make a real effort to hire the best employees for your business.
If you hire the best, you can find people who are highly educated/skilled, motivated, and loyal, amongst other things, everything else will have a much easier time of falling into place.
They will work hard and smart, generate new and exciting ideas and free up your own time and energy to work on the tasks that come most easily to you, which is exactly what needs to happen.
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Treat your employees right
Of course, even the best employees will not help your business to get off the ground if you do not treat them right. That’s why you also need to focus on the employee journey. Taking steps to ensure your employees are healthy, happy, and stimulated at work will go a long way to ensuring that you get the best from them and that your company grows as a result. It will also ensure those hand-picked employees stick with your business and help you to achieve better things in terms of growth, productivity, innovation, and… well you get the idea.
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Focus on your core customers
As a small business, it can be tempting to try and chase as many new customers as possible when you are looking to grow your company. However, a much more successful strategy is often to focus on your core customers – the customers that already exist.
Why? Because it is far more cost-effective to sell more product to customers you already have than it is to acquire new ones, and all you need to do is set up a loyalty program or referral scheme to keep them happy. The more they like your company, the more they will spread the word about it and get you new customers, that way too.
Of course, you will still need to market to new customers too, but when you are in the early stages, your existing customers are your best source of revenue.
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Lower your risk
If you want to see as much growth as possible in your business, then you need to ensure that your company has a few risk points as possible.
Of course, when you start a business, some risk is always inevitable, but it is possible to keep risk to a minimum by purchasing insurance that will cover as many eventualities as possible.
You can also lower your risk level by ensuring that your employees are fully trained in their role, and in health and safety too.
Any products and services you sell should be fully user-tested and made in accordance with local manufacturing rules.
Basically, anything you can do to lower your risk burden will lower your chances of getting a bad reputation or having a lawsuit filed against you, which means you will be able to stay in business and start building a positive reputation that will help speed up your growth.
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Give a great customer experience
I think we can all agree that without customers, no business would exist for very long, and growth would be all but impossible. So, if you’re serious about seeing swifter growth for your startup, one thing you cannot afford to do is to ignore the needs of your customers.
No, if you want to see growth, then you absolutely need to ensure that you are delivering an excellent customer experience.
If you can do this, then they will sing your praises on social media, which means more people will sit up and take notice, and they will come back for more, which means it will be a little easier for you to keep telling them products and services.
If you give them a bad experience, however, they will leave bad reviews and tell their friends how awful your company is and you will get nowhere fast.
Okay, but how exactly do you give your customers a great experience? You start by not promising them anything you cannot deliver on. So if, for example, you know that you cannot possibly pick, pack and dispatch products for next day delivery reliably you offer them two-day delivery instead. That way, you will never disappoint them, and on occasion, you will even be able to exceed their expectations.
Another thing you will need to do is ensure that your employees if they will be dealing with customers at any point, have a decent education in best customer service practices.
If customers engage with your company only to be met with surly individuals who do not know how to help them and seem uninterested in doing so, then you can bet a bad review and a lost customers will be the consequences, However, if you can answer calls/emails/live chats quickly, provide the right information fast and do so as politely as possible, even when things do go wrong, customers will probably be happy to recommend you and use your company again, Good customer service matters, so ensure you are in a position to offer it.
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Be willing to adapt
If you want to grow fast as a business, you need to be able to adapt as and when the news arises. You need to be able to change what you do and how you do it as the market changes to take advantage of what is most likely to make you money at any given time.
That means you need to take an agile approach to running your business. For example, if you run a pop culture business t-shirt, you might be doing well selling Dr. Who t-shirts while the show is on, but what happens when the next big thing comes along, and everyone wants a piece of it? If you aren’t set up to change your product and start printing that new Sci-Fi shows best characters immediately, you could be knocked over by the wave of enthusiasm when you should be riding it.
If you’re always ready for whatever may come your way and you act quickly, you can always stay ahead and you can always keep growing your company, it really is that simple.
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Reinvest
As a startup, when you finally get into profit, it can be an exciting moment for you, your employees, and your family. It can be tempting to pocket all that profit for yourself or to give it out as staff bonuses to thank them for their hard work, or maybe to show appreciation to the family who have supported you along the way.
This is a nice thing to think about doing, and maybe you can use a little of your profits to do that, but if you’re serious about growing your company as swiftly as possible, what you should really be doing is reinvesting those profits in your business. Use them to buy more efficient equipment so you can produce more units each week or to hire the best employees you can find, maybe even to market more effectively to your target audience, but do not just fritter them all away.
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Be more socially responsible
One of the best ways to grow swiftly right now is to ensure that your company is as socially responsible as possible, especially if you are looking to get ahead of the competition. Why: Because right now, customers are increasingly becoming socially aware themselves. They are becoming vegetarians or vegans and thinking more about the climate and how well workers are treated amongst other things. So, if you can give them what they want by running your business as socially responsibly as you possibly can, then there is a very good chance they will choose you over the competition.
Not only that, but numerous studies have shown that customers are often willing to spend way more money on the same item if they know that said item has been ethically manufactured and sold by a socially responsible company, so you could add a lot of value to your business by focusing in on the ethical side of it all.
As you can see, the keys to startup success are not quite as difficult as you might have thought, but putting them into action is going to take some hard work and maybe a little investment, and although not all of them may be applicable to you right now, depending n where you are in your business journey, the more of them you can apply to the stunning of your startup, the more successful you are likely to be.
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