(Newswire.net — May 15, 2020) — If you’ve managed to turn your business from an idea to reality, then you’ve already completed an impressive achievement. This is especially true if you’ve managed to make it past the five-year mark, as roughly 51% of small businesses fail to do so. Unfortunately, the odds of failure continue to rise the older a business gets, with only about a third making it to their 10-year anniversary. These statistics, combined with a commonly held erroneous belief that most businesses fail in their first year keep many would-be entrepreneurs from even trying.
If you’ve managed to keep your doors open, you’ve no doubt been thinking about how you can increase revenue and grow your business for long-term success. As you likely suspect, there are no easy ways to achieve this, but with good planning, you can certainly boost your chances. Here are some great things you can do to prepare for business growth.
Use the OKR Framework
Objectives and key results (OKRs) is a management tool used to determine and communicate company strategy. Andy Grove, a co-founder of Intel, is credited as the father of OKRs, and the framework was further popularized by venture capitalist John Doerr when he introduced the practice to Google. OKRs are considered an important part of how Google transformed from a relatively small business into the tech giant we know today. The OKR template is broken down into a couple of basic ideas.
Objectives: These are the overall goals you set for the company. They should be simple, clear, and easy to communicate. It’s generally best to focus on just a few team objectives at a time. An example could be to increase sales by 10% by the end of the quarter. There should be an objective for each department so that all team members can contribute.
Key Results: These are the metrics that measure progress toward your objectives. Key results are specific numerical values that communicate the success of the entire organization as well as individual employees. Tracking the number of sales throughout a quarter will keep your team updated on how close you are to completing your example objective.
Effective OKR reporting makes it easy to define clear goals, boost employee engagement, and increase transparency.
Offer Personalized Customer Service
As with any for-profit organization, your customers are your most important resource. Retaining customers is always easier than attracting new ones, and offering a stand-out positive experience will generate goodwill, and pleased customers may even refer your business to others. Of course, the opposite is also true, as 97% of customers say a bad customer service experience changes their buying behavior.
A great way to ensure positive experiences is to make sure you’re always available for customer questions and concerns. If your business is too large to guarantee this yourself, you may want to invest in automated contact center technology. This way, customers are always answered in a timely manner, and you can even collect customer data to use for personalized offers. To ensure your services are available, even during power outages, you can invest in a generator from this generators UK company. Generators keep all kinds of commercial buildings running, and they’re a must for anyone offering essential services.
Build an Online Presence
If you’re serious about growing your business, it’ll be hard to get anywhere without the power of the internet behind you. Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for any modern business since your rankings in search results directly affect how many users your site will have. Optimizing your site for mobile devices will ensure a convenient experience for users, and there are free tools like Google My Business that can help you connect with customers and stand out. A presence in local search results, which dominate mobile searches, can increase foot traffic to your physical store as well as your website.
Growing your business is a time-consuming process, likely even more so than getting it off the ground in the first place. It’s the only way to achieve long-term success, though, and following best practices will give you a significant advantage.