The Stages of Small Business Growth
So you’re small business is growing and thriving, congratulations! However, it’s important to remember that as a business grows it goes through different stages and challenges. As a small business owner, you should strive to keep adapting your strategy in order to keep up with all the changes and challenges.
After all, what works right now may not continue to work as your business evolves and grows. So what exactly are the stages of small business growth? How can you manage each stage and continue onto the path of success?
1. Existence
So the first stage of small business is all about basic existence as a business. This stage is when you have just started out and are still trying to make it work successfully. There are a few challenges you will likely face during this stage.
Challenges: You will have a lot of questions that you need to ask yourself during this stage. The main concern being: Can I devise a product or service that customers will want? If the answer is yes, then your chances of moving onto the next stage are pretty likely. At this stage, it’s unlikely that you’ll be making much money. You may have to run at a loss for a while, until you get enough paying customers to break even. Raising funds, and making careful use of those funds, will be critical.
The key thing to focus on at this stage is acquiring new customers. After all without customers, your business will not survive. More customers, paying or not, means more people talking about your business and hopefully recommending it to others. You should value your customers feedback and make sure you have a way to communicate and stay in touch with your customers.
2. Survival
The next stage is all about surviving for the long-term. You need to be able to sell products at a high enough price to break even and start generating profits.
Challenges: The main challenge during this stage is making a profit. To put it simply, your challenge is to make your revenue outpace your costs. If you don’t succeed in doing that, then you will eventually run out of funds and have to close the doors.
If you succeed at this stage, you’ll have a self-sustaining business. That gives you several wonderful opportunities:
- The ability to work for yourself full-time, without worrying about how long you can keep doing it for.
- The ability to start hiring other staff and providing a living to them as well.
- The chance to meet and connect with new customers and with other business owners in your industry, and more.
The main goal of this stage is to bring in customers and pay close attention to pricing in order to ensure you are making a substantial profit.
3. Success
During this stage you move beyond basic survival and start actually thriving. You generate enough profits to either fund additional growth or provide you with a generous income.
Challenges: The challenge here is to move beyond survival. You need to find new ways to bring in income at a level of profit margin that enables you to put funds back into the business. A lot of small businesses get stuck in stage 2, where they have the means for basic survival but aren’t making enough to move onto stage 3.
To move beyond survival and start making sustainable profits, you’ll probably need to be much more systematic than you needed to be in the early stages of the business. Planning for growth becomes much more important, so you can take the time now to think carefully about the path you want to take and the steps necessary to get there.
The Stages of Small Business Takeaway
All in all, there are many challenges and changes that you will face as a small business. However it’s important that you learn how to adapt and change in order to overcome these challenges and reach the success stage.
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