How to Get Business Growth Moving Again After It Has Stagnated

When you start up a business, you enjoy a lot of growth straight away because you’re coming from a zero base. Your venture and what it offers is new to everyone, and you can increase sales in many areas quickly.

However, once you’ve passed the launch phase, it’s common for growth to stagnate. This is something you want to limit as much as possible, unless you need some catch-up time to get your systems or suppliers right. If you’ve hit a plateau, read on for some strategies you can follow to get business growth clanking forward again.

Focus Intensively on Sales

Something not a lot of people do but that can make a huge difference to business growth is to focus intensively on sales. It may seem obvious, but lots of entrepreneurs feel like “selling” is a dirty word and that they can’t or shouldn’t do it, so they don’t dedicate much time to it at all. However, if you increase the amount of hours you and/or your team devote to the sales process, you’ll soon start see it paying dividends.

Sales prospecting doesn’t have to be hard. Simply concentrate on ways in which you can generate new leads and then convert more of these leads into transactions. The more you focus on this, the more comfortable you’ll get with it, and the easier it will be to see what works and what doesn’t.

Don’t purely try to increase sales when it comes to your end users. Think about selling your concept and wares to other stakeholders, too. For instance, grow your business by selling its benefits to an investor or a lender, or get journalists interested in profiling you.

If you feel daunted by the idea of selling your business and all the benefits it provides, note that there are resources you can use. You may have employees on hand who are adept at this side of things, or you can outsource the role to dedicated sales agents. It’s all about finding what works best for you. If you do get people working on sales, make sure you put key performance indicators (KPIs) in place to keep them accountable and constantly reaching for better results.

Learn New Things

Make sure that as the leader of a business you are constantly learning new things. If you want to develop your business, you must develop yourself. The more you learn, the better able you will be to make wise decisions that help the business grow, and the better you will be at spotting opportunities to pursue as well as risks to avoid or plan for.

There are all sorts of ways to grow yourself. For example, if you haven’t already completed a degree in business or another program that’s relevant to your field or to management, you may want to consider enrolling in a university degree. There are also many excellent shorter courses available online and offline, which can be a good investment of your time and money.

You can also learn by joining business groups and associations; by attending conferences, trade shows, networking meetings and other relevant events and by reading books, blogs, magazines, reports, forums, white papers etc., and listening to podcasts and audiobooks.

Surround Yourself With the Best Team Possible

Another way to get growth is to create a top team around you. For example, find a knowledgeable mentor who can guide you and look at your business with fresh eyes. An experienced mentor can help you solve problems and spot issues you may have missed.

Also, make sure you have the best employees possible. Growth may have slowed down because you don’t have the right team members or because you don’t currently have enough employees and have hit a limit on what can be achieved. Make sure you add people to your team who are passionate about the business and what it offers, who fit in with your corporate culture, who are positive and possess a can-do attitude, who are not afraid to think outside the box, who are good communicators and relationship builders and who have skills complimentary to your own.

Also, ensure you delegate effectively too. There’s no point having an amazing group of people there to support you if you don’t actually let them take things off your plate. By delegating, you will free up time for yourself to think about the bigger business picture, so you can be strategic and more growth-oriented.

Follow the tips listed above, and you are sure to soon find that your business is growing again and helping you achieve more and more of your personal and professional goals.