Planning for growth disciplines business owners to look ahead while allocating the needed resources to meet growth goals. If you know where you are going, then it is easier to take short term actions to there. There are many different paths to growth. However, regardless of the path one chooses to take, one most consider the costs involved in achieving the required growth. In this article, I will be discussing three possible growth strategies a business owner should consider.

Three growth strategies

Increase marketing activities

If your business can handle more customers without adding much to your current costs, then you still have room for growth. For instance, a restaurant that sits 50 people but only averages 10 people at any given time, has the ability to add more customers without increasing fixed costs. If you are not operating at capacity, then developing a marketing strategy will be your best way to increase your revenue. How much to spend on your marketing campaign will depend on your type of business. For some businesses, marketing is their biggest expense and they know how much they can expect to make from each dollar spent.

Increase geographic reach

To maximize business without increasing fixed costs, a business owner can think beyond doing business locally. In order to this, the business owner might need to think of creative solutions not limited to his or her current location. For example, a product can be re-packaged so it can be effectively delivered over the internet. By reaching far, a business owner has the opportunity to narrow its offerings and focus on delivering the best value for customers for his or her specific product or service. This is called niche marketing.

Offer more services to current clients

On the opposite end of reaching far and getting slim, is staying close and getting fat. By this I mean, you grow by increasing the number of products or services you offer to your current customers. For example, Richard Branson´s Virgin brand targets customers with a certain psychographic. As a result, the Virgin brand has been able to scale up his concept by offering everything from train travel to mobile phones to credit cards to their customer base.

Questions to consider

While planning for growth, be sure to question your fundamental assumptions about your current business model. Study your industry to see what is changing and examine the market to see where you could gain a competitive advantage. The strategy you choose will be highly dependent on what you are trying to achieve. Below are a few questions you should ask yourself:

• Can my business handle more customers than I currently have?
• What is my most popular and profitable product?
• Are there additional products and services I can use to complement my most popular product?
• Are there services and products I offer that are not profitable to my business?
• Can I scale better by getting rid of these less profitable products?
• Can I reach new geographical markets by adopting new distribution channels like the internet?
• Does my business model lend itself well to licensing or franchising?
• Could I break down my processes so I can teach customers how to use my process themselves?

In summary, there is no such thing as a stagnant business. You either grow or you die. Planning for growth should be part of every business owner’s strategy. The specifics of the plans will depend on what the business owner is trying to achieve.