Are you ready to grow your business – stage 1?

Are you ready to grow your business?  I think that most business owners will consider that they are.  However, I’m not sure all truly are ready. 

This is the case particularly when we consider selling to the public sector. 

There is a simple exercise that we take business owners through which helps them to:

  • assess where they are now and decide where currently are and

  • identify areas in their business where there is opportunity to grow.

The first step in this exercise is considering who your current customers are.

We can probably relatively easily come up with a list of our customers but try delving a bit deeper.  For example:

  • How much do they spend with you?

  • How long have you been working with them?

  • What do they buy?

  • Why not speak to your customers, what do they love about what you do?

When we take business owners through this exercise they are often surprised by the answers.  Often the customer who spends the most with them is not the customer they would have put at the top of this list. 

In the same way the most popular of their products is not always the product they would consider it to be.

By carrying out this exercise they are taking the first steps towards selling to the public sector.  When bidding to sell to the public sector you often must provide examples of similar contracts you have delivered.

The information you have gathered in this exercise will help you to provide the best examples of contracts. 

Some business owners do not consider themselves to be delivering contracts but by carrying out this exercise you can see that you do in fact contract with customers, no matter how informal. 

Taking 15 minutes to carry out this exercise on a regular basis will take you one step closer to being ready to grow your business.   Why not join us in our FREE Facebook group and let us know how you get on? 

You can download our Growth Strategy Guide. This guide takes you through 8 key areas to consider in growing your business. 

Join us next week when we take you through the next step in preparing to grow your business. 

Shiona Campbell