You have successfully taken your business from stage zero to the first stage. Now you have a product live in the market, you have some customers, maybe a couple of partners and even a financier. What next? It is now time to move the business to the next stage – thousands of customers, millions of dollars in revenue, a larger team, maybe more financiers, and so on.

Note first that there is no saying how long the startup stage would or should last. It can be a year, two years, five years, or even more. When it is time to move on to the growth stage, it is quite obvious to everyone on the team.

Here are three skills you need when you want to grow your business from the launch stage to become a successful company.

Sales

Naturally, if you are looking to grow revenue from hundreds of thousands into millions, you need to work on sales. Get more customers on board, increase your market share, expand into new areas perhaps, and generally grow sales. You will need the skills to execute all of these at the growth stage.

Customer service

This is closely linked to the former. As you onboard new customers, you have to develop a customer service culture that will keep your customers glued to you. There will be constant competition with other brands upping their game to give as much or even more than you do. It may require you to upgrade your solution to keep up. If you can keep your customers happy and satisfied, they become your evangelists.

Team building and people management

You are going to be working with a larger team than you did at the beginning. Depending on your model, this may be completely remote, physical, or a hybrid of both. It will take more from you to manage a team of 100 people than it did to manage a team of 10. That is why I mentioned in a previous post that one person may not have all the skills but in some cases they do. You may be good at building and working very well with a team of 10 people, but not a team of 100.

One thing you should keep in mind is creating a sense of mission that brings them together. A lot at this stage will depend on the culture you built with a smaller team. How you develop and treat your team members is very important.

There are other skills you will need as you gradually grow your business from the launch stage to become a successful company. Things like risk management, resource management, and so on. For most of them, you may have team members who have that expertise, but when it comes to sales and people management, you have to be directly involved. You should know what is going on with your sales team at every point because if there are no sales, the business is going nowhere.

No excuses….

Develop a habit of not making a lot of excuses because those who do struggle to thrive. They argue a new city, a new job, a new school, a new boss, more funds in the startup, more staff in the team, etc will do the magic and transform everything. Instead of making excuses, focus on getting that thing or simply work around to eliminate the need for that thing!

Feel the challenge but quickly rise to find a solution. He gets things done; no excuses. More will recommend you at your absence.

The year 2021 is coming to an end with a lot of goods costing almost double what they did in January. Inflation has marred the little progress recorded by small business owners since the hit caused by the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020. The little optimism which came from the lift of the lockdown, roll-out of the vaccination program, and reopening of several industries has been dampened by these happenings. We are seeing prices increase across the board. In fact, no sector has been spared.

Why does this affect small business owners more than their big counterparts?

The cost of raw materials has significantly risen. Several operations costs from rents, to utilities, have also gone up. The result is that every business has to pass on this cost to consumers in form of higher prices. Both big, medium, and small businesses have to do this.

However, the big businesses have economies of scale to their advantage. Due to large purchases and production scale, they can afford to only increase prices slightly and still stay profitable. For small and medium-scale businesses, the story is different. Trying to compete with the ‘big guys’ in pricing will be near impossible. Even if you had stocked up before the price went up, you will run out of supplies sooner or later.

There are a couple of suggestions I think small business owners can apply to cushion the effects and try to stay a bit competitive. These tips may be more for businesses that sell physical products, but they can be tweaked to apply to other kinds of businesses.

Up your customer service game

As an entrepreneur, you can foster a more profound, more grounded, more close-to-home relationship with your clients and customers. Client support/customer service has the same amount of significant worth as any product, solution, or service that you offer. Truth be told, 90% of individuals use customer service as an influence when choosing whether or not to patronize a brand.

Many bigger brands will not be able to pay much attention to customer service, just because of the sheer size of their customer base. As part of creating an excellent customer experience and managing your online reputation, use constructive feedback from customers to improve your services. This shows them that you care about their experiences and sets them apart from the pack.

Differentiate your product

Since you already know that you cannot win this fight on the pricing scale, work towards differentiating your product from what is generally available. Add some little ‘frills’ here and there, something extra to keep going. Improve the quality of your product so that when consumers are trying to justify their reasons to purchase from you, they can find logical reasons too. Things like speedy complaint resolutions, quicker deliveries, request for reviews and feedback, and the likes can do a lot to influence more of the market your way.

Value-added services

There are some value-added services and benefits that could actually influence some customers to choose small businesses over the bigger brands. In addition to your improved customer care, you can look at things like offering warranty, installation services, discounts on subsequent purchases, etc. All of these could be part of a customer loyalty program where customers get small perks for choosing you over others.

Identify and stick to markets where you have the highest proficiency

If you can identify markets that give you some level of control due to your high level of proficiency and comparative advantage, this is another way to go.