Ideas To Grow Your Business
Image courtesy: freedigitalphotos.net/ddpavumba
As a small business person you are always looking for ideas to grow your business.So here are some ideas that are curated just for you – the small and medium business owner. Ideas that can help you reach your best ever.
- KISS: – Keeping it Short and Simple is an ideology that has existed for a long time. But it has never been more important than today, when people`s attention span has been growing shorter and shorter in their ever busy lives. Keep your marketing messages brief yet powerful enough to convey your brand’s message convincingly.
- Build a community of people who can benefit from you and your business. Start a blog that provides your target community with useful business information rather than just sensational headlines that will not retain your community interest for long. Use this to build deeper connections with people who value what your business does, call you, write to you and buy your products / services.
- Be very receptive and attentive to customer feedback. What your customers think about your product or service plays a huge role in retaining or losing them. Not only that, they could sway their circles of influence, which could have a direct impact on your business.
- Referrals are key and giving is more important than getting. Remember people will not refer business to you just because you asked for it. Before you receive anything you need to start giving – without any strings attached. People, including business persons, tend to respond extremely positively when you do something to help them without asking for anything in return. They return the good deed by willingly passing on business your way by way of referrals.
- Don’t be afraid of failure. The celebrated author J.K Rowling once said, “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.” Other successful business persons have extolled the virtues of failing and learning from your failures. So don’t be afraid to get out of your comfort zone and try new ideas to boost your business.
Image downloaded from wikipedia
- Dare to do what no one else does. Change your focus from doing work that pays your bills to work that makes a path-breaking difference. As Seth Godin stated, making a difference is always hard. Zig Ziglar said “create your schedule before you start”. Don’t allow setbacks, mental blocks or anxiety to push you to take a break. Focus a lot on doing work that makes a difference because that is what will differentiate you from the competition.
- Get rid of the “box”. Thinking outside the box was a fashionable concept. Remove the box from your mind. Don’t put parameters around your thinking.
- Choose your clients wisely. Jim Connolly, a marketing expert, says that while it is tempting to grab whatever work that comes your way, working with great clients and inspiring projects will place you in a different league. This may be daunting for a small or medium business. Commit yourself to gaining one “strong client” every quarter during this year and you will find this self-fulfilling.
- Set your business up for the long-term. Ensure you do one activity every month whose impact is not going to be felt immediately. But will prove its worth in gold for the long-term and sustained success of your business.
- Have a happy team. If you are one of those small or medium businesses which have a team, as a business owner ensure that your people are happy. There is not a single successful organization that has built its success on unhappy people. Your team’shappiness quotient will play a big role in how your organization appears in front of your customers and you want to keep your customers coming back, again and again.
- Be unreasonable: the famous philosopher George Bernard Shaw once stated “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man “. So, stretch yourself, demand more of yourself and your business. And, you will find the paths open up to greater prosperity.
Image downloaded from robinsharma.com
The above is but a small collection of the many ideas you can use to grow your business this year. Before I end I could not, but recollect a quote from Robin Sharma, a highly acclaimed motivational speaker and my favorite.
He said “the world needs more unreasonable souls who fight the urge to be ordinary”.
You can be one of them. Starting today.
