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Top tips to help your business prosper and grow

Running a business is daunting and requires a huge investment in both time and money, not to mention having to make difficult decisions on a daily basis that will ultimately affect your livelihood.

Surviving these roadblocks and maintaining a successful business is a huge achievement, but does raise other questions, such as how to grow your business beyond its current status.

Happily there are numerous opportunities, depending on the type of business you own, your available resources and how much equity you’re willing to invest.

Hire the right people

Before you even think about your company’s growth trajectory, you need to be sure you have the right team members in place to help you achieve it. They need to be both ready to pitch in and completely dedicated to your company’s mission statement.

Manage risk

When you grow a business, it’s impossible to control every aspect, but there are ways to limit internal and external threats, the most effective being to invest in insurance. It’s essential that all businesses manage their growth to avoid disruptions that could bring them to an almighty halt. For example, data theft can generate significant costs and erode customer loyalty so choose a policy that covers cyber losses and information breaches.

Also, as your business grows, you may add space, equipment and new staff or increase the scale of your operations so regularly review your policy to make sure you have the correct amount of coverage.

Be adaptable

Successful small businesses will have the ability to switch directions quickly in response to changes in the market. This agility will help your business to grow more rapidly, while testing the water with different approaches in order to find out what works best for you.

Expand to another location

Expansion requires careful consideration and planning and it’s important to make sure that your bottom line is consistent and that you’re showing steady signs of growth. To get an indication about your company’s staying power, be sure to look at economic and consumer forecasts.

Ensure your administrative systems are up to scratch, prepare a business plan for the new location and determine how you’ll obtain financing. Finally, choose your location based on what’s best for your business, not your funds.

Diversify your offering

There are several ways to do this, including selling complementary products or services that will allow you to have multiple streams of income, filling seasonal voids while increasing profit margins and boosting brand recognition. Diversification will also help to broaden your target audience and increase your presence in the marketplace.

Focus on customer experience

Your customers’ perception of your business will ultimately make or break you. Delivering quality services will have them sing your praises, but do a bad job and word will spread like wildfire, never a good sign in a world dominated by social media and customer review websites.

Fast growth depends on making existing customers happy and the good news is that small businesses tend to be nimbler and better able to anticipate and respond to their needs.

Have the necessary funds available

A business cash advance provides a simple way of raising finance and, as it’s based on monthly credit and debit card revenue, funds tend to be released to small businesses in as little as 72 hours. This is because forecasts and plans aren’t required to make a decision, unlike with traditional lenders such as banks, which tend to employ a far more lengthy application process. Businesses usually need to have been trading for at least 12 months with proof of card turnover history to be eligible for a business cash advance.

Always think ahead

While agility is a good quality for any scalable small business to possess, it’s impossible to get by without a solid plan in place. Planning the next step means anticipating all possible scenarios. If you put the proper foundations in place, when the business does adapt, change and seek to grow, these adjustments won’t be difficult to navigate.

Quick Capital provides business cash advances to businesses taking card payments through their merchant account, providing an alternative to difficult to secure bank loans. To find out more, visitwww.quickcapital.co.uk or call 0800 3777 402.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Quick Capital .