One of the reasons for obtaining a small business loan is growing your company. This involves reaching a broader customer base, expanding production, hiring more workers and, ideally, increasing your profit margins. To have a chance at scaling up your company and significantly expanding it beyond its current customer scope and market share, you need to ensure the business is more efficient in production and sales.
Here are four tips small-business owners can use to help grow their companies:
- Be confident in your company
Chances are your business will suffer from early setbacks. There’s no shame in not having a highly successful business right out of the gate. It takes time to build your brand and acquire a solid customer base. During this time period of lackluster sales or stagnant growth, when customers and investors may have doubts about your product or business model, be sure to instill an air of confidence when you go about doing business. Customers and business associates will respond better to owners who make an assured impression on them.In the same vein, use your confidence to mask your doubts. Growing your business is a risky endeavor that may require you to seek out investors. Even if you have some doubts about a possible pitch you need to make to acquire additional investments, don’t let it overshadow the confidence you have in your product. People pick up on these sort of temperamental codes, and if potential investors see your face drenched in doubt, they too will have doubts about helping you grow your business.
- Be the face of your company
A small business, unlike a major multinational corporation, has the opportunity to interact face-to-face with customers. This gives small-business owners the unique ability to have much more control over the customer experience. Owners of companies the size of McDonald’s or Nike will only meet their customers for a publicity event or in a coincidental encounter. But those companies have internationally recognized brands that can handle much of the marketing work for them. Small businesses, on the other hand, need an owner who is actively engaged in the company’s day-to-day operations. This not only lets you to maintain constant oversight of the business, but it also allows customers to recognize who is in charge. When customers know the owner is actively involved in the company, businesses are more likely to thrive.
- Don’t use your company like a piggy bank
Growing a company requires resources and business capital. If you use your business account as your own personal checking account, you’re depriving your company of the resources it needs to grow. You can still pay yourself a fair salary, but be sure to take the company’s profits and reinvest them back into the business.
- Don’t be everything for your company
As a small-business owner, you’ll most likely end up wearing many hats for your company, whether you’re performing the roles of an entire C-suite of positions or the majority of the necessary grunt work. At a certain point though, you need to step back and take time to work on your business, instead of for your business. This requires you to hire trustworthy and capable individuals who you can entrust with some of the most crucial roles in your operation. Don’t burn yourself out trying to solve every problem and fix every mistake. You need to be the visionary guiding your company’s growth, but you can’t do that if you can’t step back and take a look at the bigger picture.
