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Some Affordable Ideas
For Growing Your Business

With inflation, labor shortages and more, small businesses have almost endless challenges these days. We’ve shared a lot of strategies for dealing with these, but here are some other, more general ideas on growing your business. While they are almost always helpful, now may be an especially good time for your business to adapt some:

• Customer Service Excellence: A relatively easy and low-cost way to set your business apart from competitors is to ensure every customer has a memorable experience with your service or product delivery. Of course, this isn’t entirely easy or low cost, but it’s almost always easier and less costly than any alternative. One tip: consider problems like an angry customer an opportunity to win a customer for life. Sometimes you’ll need to make significant changes to procedures or products, but most often it’s simply taking a minute to hear the customer and make a serious effort to respond.

• Another idea also involves people, but people outside your business through networking, seminars, webinars, and other “gatherings” where topics related to your business are discussed. These are generally separate from “mere” networking where socializing is a major goal. That’s not to say socializing is bad; sometimes it’s hard not to get some business from a good social event. But what we’re focusing on here are learning opportunities relating to your business. This could be anything from a speaker on logistics with an in-person audience of a few hundred, a discussion on Zoom with eight people, or anything in between.

The key to these seminar events is the exchange of knowledge, which can also be inspiring, even exciting. Learning a new process or technique that you can apply to your business is worth getting excited about. If it’s boring, you may not have a good teacher, or the topic isn’t relevant!

• Employee Training and Development: With few exceptions, small business employees are a key to the organization’s success. Sure, when you start with yourself and maybe some family members, you are the business. But once you have more than a handful of employees, training, development, and “onboarding” are critical. Onboarding is often overlooked because many take it for granted. “My employees all know and share my vision, my goal, right?” Well, not if you don’t tell them and work for them to share it! Like training and skill development, onboarding is one of those things that’s easy to minimize, but at great risk. On the other hand, doing this right can turn your operation from “just another business” into a market leader.

There are countless other ideas, but these are often overlooked and can be accomplished without a huge investment. And remember, sustainable growth often takes time and patience. It's essential to focus on your customers, adapt to changing circumstances, and stay committed to your business goals. Additionally, seeking advice from mentors or business advisors can provide valuable insights for your specific industry and situation. Good luck!