Feel Lost in Your Business? Maybe All You Need to Do Is Clarify Your Growth Plan.
Do you know how to create a perfect growth plan for your business?
Do you know how to create a perfect growth plan for your business? If you've ever wondered in your business, "Where do I go from here?" then this is the blog post for you!
It's a question that too many business owners find themselves asking in nearly every stage of their business. You put in weeks and months, maybe even years, of work to lay the foundation of your business, working tirelessly to get it off the ground. You start to see some preliminary success and you get this amazing feeling of accomplishment. But then when your business starts to get a little stagnant, you start to see this unsettling feeling, a feeling of fear.
Your business started out great, but now what? It's not growing as fast as you hoped, and you want it to be doing much better.
Between the countless hours of brainstorming, the late nights, the bottomless cups of coffee, you get that feeling of worry. Worry that you won't be able to effectively put an end to this stagnation. Worry that your business won't reach its full potential. And you're right on the cusp of achieving your goals, but you just have to find the million dollar answer to that one simple question, "Where do I go from here?"
Figuring out the answers to that question can be challenging, but it's a lot easier with the right approach and tools. In fact, you may just need a little help from an expert. As Lead Coach at Success with Digital and Digital Marketer Elite Coach, I help clients answer that very question all of the time. Not by doing it for them, but showing them how to do it themselves.
In my Creating a Growth Goal workshop, the key to figuring out where you need to go with your business is creating a growth plan. Not one that just focuses on a goal of just growing your business, but one that helps you to focus on and improve very specific aspects of your business that ultimately result in growth and starting a business is hard.
Growing a business is even harder. Figuring out how to achieve growth is perhaps the biggest challenge your business will face, and it can make or break your business. But it's not time to panic because it is totally doable.
I've broken down some tips from my workshop so you can create your perfect growth plan and be able to be on your way to fulfilling your business's full potential.
There are two components of a growth plan. When you're creating a growth plan, you'll need a goal and a way to measure growth.
The Key to a Perfect Growth Plan: Your Goal
The first component, your goal, is what makes your plan your perfect growth plan. There is no definitive perfect growth plan, only one that is perfect for your business. Only you will know how much you want your business to grow over a set of period of time, as well of what's actually attainable with the resources that you have.
Growth isn't a sprint; it's a marathon. So setting a growth goal to grow your revenue by 20% in six months and actually doing it is significantly better than setting a goal to grow by 75% in six months and not even coming close. So yes, you wanna aim high, but also be realistic and reasonable.
As for what actually goes into picking your growth goal, the best way to start is by understanding how your business is already performing. Once you have that understanding, you'll be able to easily figure out what exactly it is that you need to do in order to grow.
The Second Part of Your Growth Plan: Measuring Growth
The second component is the way that you measure your growth, and it is just as critical as the first component mainly because your growth plan really means nothing without it.
If you don't have a way to track if your growth plan is working, all you're really doing is goal setting.
You can figure out all sorts of ways to measure the effectiveness of your perfect growth plan, but the most sure-fire way to truly recognize growth is through your business's success metrics. Chances are those were the things you're focusing on or you were focusing on improving in the first place.
Whether it's revenue, number of customers, or your unique visitors to your website, make sure that you're measuring and keeping track of your success metrics so you can actually see your growth.
Putting It All Together
Once you put these two components together (your goal and your metrics), you're going to be able to create a growth plan that will actually be attainable.
This leads us to the four steps to create that perfect growth plan for your business.
Step 1
The first step in creating the perfect growth plan for your business is to select the metrics that you want to track. The first thing that you need to do is to select them and then you need to track the progress. Remember these metrics should correlate directly to your business's all-around growth.
With this in mind, ask yourself this question: What metrics reflect growth in my business?
For an eCommerce business, it might be an increase in individual transactions. For service-based businesses, it may be doubling your lead-to-client conversion rate. Whatever you choose, they need to be measurable and they need to correlate with real, tangible business growth.
Additionally, you should always keep an eye out on your revenue. Increasing customers is great until you realize your ad spend is cutting your profits in half. If you use your revenue as an anchor, that might be what happens because your tracking isn't in depth enough. After you identify the metrics that matter most, you should compile them into a spreadsheet. Having them all in one place will make the rest of the process much easier.
Want to learn more about the metrics your business should be tracking? Check out this blog post to learn more.
Step 2
The next step is to assess your current status. Before you can plan for the future, you have to look at the present.
Now that you know the metrics that you want to improve, you need to look at the status of those metrics right now. This doesn't mean simply knowing what those numbers are. You also need to understand why they are what they are.
For example, if your current revenue is $60,000 a month, you should understand the things you are doing and the decisions you are making that got you there. How many transactions does it take to get to that number? How much of that are you spending on advertising? What's your net profit margin? These are all things that will help you gather a holistic understanding of where your business is at.
This step might seem simple–and it kind of is–but it is also extremely important for the next two steps.
Step 3
The third step is to set your growth goal. Now that you know what your metrics currently look like, you can set a growth goal. To do that you'll need to figure out a couple things.
How much you want to grow by
The specific metrics you want to focus on growing the most
With a better understanding of where your business is at, you should be able to figure out both of these things with relative ease.
Just remember to be realistic. Walmart, Amazon weren't built overnight, and it took decades of them working to get where they're at now. Pick a goal that is achievable and after you hit that milestone, you'll be better prepared to keep growing in the future.
Step 4
The last step is to accomplish your goals and look to the future. With a way to track growth and a goal in mind, you can start to try new strategies to get there. This can seem intimidating because really there are no right or wrong answers when it comes to what will work. It's different for every business based on your industry, resources, customer avatar, and your Customer Value Journey.
This is why knowing how your business is currently performing is so important when beginning this process. It shows you what you can do if you change absolutely nothing. Then when you start to make changes, you can see how your numbers change. If you're not happy with the results, just return to step one and try something else.
After you accomplish that growth, you can then figure out new ways to improve your business. With your new-found profits, you might want to get a new warehouse, launch a new product, or do a massive website overhaul that will help your business to continue to grow even more. Only you will know what will significantly help your business.
Final Thoughts
Take the time to really look at your numbers, project on what you can do, set a growth goal, and repeat that process over and over again. Once you have that process mastered, then you can put the fear of stagnation behind you. If you ever find your business not performing as well as you want it to, take a step back and use this process to focus on what you need to fix.
At the very least, I would recommend doing this process at the beginning of every year. It's not only good to always have a thorough understanding of how your business is doing, but it's also good to have a goal to work towards. Setting a yearly goal can help you stay focused, motivated, and productive, and metrics are a tool for growth that go severely underutilized.
If you can use your metrics as an interactive tool instead of just a cool number, you can set yourself apart and outgrow your competition. Then you won't have to worry about your business getting stagnant. You'll only have to worry about figuring out what growth goal you're going to achieve next.
