Where to begin...
Growing a small business in the UK can seem like a daunting task at times. Many owners focus on long-term strategic planning, but they forget about things like the power of utilising existing customers to grow your company and achieve your business goals.
Furthermore, a lot of these companies don’t understand which strategies are the best for their specific scenario.
So if you are asking yourself “how to grow a small business?” this is where a small business growth consultant comes in.
Where to go for business support
As a small business owner, it can be difficult to know where to turn for support and advice. Friends and family mean well, and have your best interests at heart, but will likely lack the experience and knowledge to offer the best guidance on how to grow your small business.
There is less support available for those that have grown to be medium-sized businesses or are on the cusp of being so. Those that are around 5 years old and have experienced a period of growth, but have now plateaued can, in particular, find it hard to know where to go next without having some sort of business strategy or business model.
However, many people choose to stay in this situation. It’s comfortable, often very manageable, and can provide an enjoyable work-life balance. But did you start your business to be average and comfortable, or to be great at what you do and have a really successful business?
Our money is on the latter.
Which leads to the question: what's next and how do you get there?
With years of business coaching experience across multiple sectors and industries, and coaching over 200 businesses directly, we’ve created a number of coaching tools specifically designed for the needs of a small business wishing to grow. One of them is the business scorecard.
The scorecard is derived from another model, the coaching star, which offers a framework of 5 questions that are at the heart of making SME business progression happen.
The scorecard though is a simple and effective tool for identifying the gaps and untapped levers of opportunity for growing your business.
It’s a simple yes or no to each of the questions. You can quickly identify where things only exist in your head, which prevents the rest of the business from benefiting or using it, and what other tools and tactics as a business owner you are under-utilising. This means it’s great for devising an action plan for what needs to happen next in your business.
How to use the Business Scorecard
For example, within the financial control of your business, do you have:
- Regular financial management reports which are reviewed and used strategically, such as profit & loss, cash flow, debtor reports, balance sheet, and sales forecast?
- Debtor management systemised?
- Cash flow forecasted and monitored closely?
- Individual profit centres analysed alongside their targets?
If the answer to any of these is ‘no’ then not only do these offer the opportunity for quicker identification of the challenges you may have but also mean you may be missing the opportunities available to you to achieve business growth.
For instance, if you don’t readily know whether an individual profit centre is over or under-achieving its target, it’s harder to make strategic decisions about investment and product/service development.
The insight garnered from the scorecard tells you where to prioritise your next set of actions and where to start looking for the keys to restart the engine of your business’ growth.
It’s a really useful and enlightening tool to identify how to grow a small business.
How to grow your small business is dependent on your circumstances, industry and ambition. There are lots of routes you could take, and being able to evaluate and consider them all to make an informed decision is crucial to ensuring you build the business you deserve and want.
This is just one way in which having a business coach adds real value as they provide experience, expertise and often a tough line of questioning to make you think and consider, and then ensure you take action too.
We’d usually discuss this scorecard with our clients while they are completing it, so this could be a prime opportunity to have a complimentary business review with one of our expert coaches and discuss how to grow a small business with an expert!
You can explore our other approaches and models on the site and see whether a coaching programme may be right for you.
