This post was originally posted on the Udemy Blog at https://www.udemy.com/blog/business-development-strategies/
Are you a small business owner that would like to see your business grow in the coming year? If so, you are probably wondering what the best way to develop your business is. After all, there are countless strategies and choosing the right one can be a daunting task. Fortunately, there are some business development strategies used by Fortune 500 companies that can be applied equally as well to small business ventures looking for new growth opportunities.
In this article, you will learn five business development strategies that can bring your small to medium-sized business to the next level. These strategies are taken directly from larger companies that have demonstrated long-term success. You can learn more about growing your business in Growth Hacking: An Introduction.
Please keep in mind that not all of these strategies will work perfectly in your situation, but if you carefully consider how and why these strategies work, you will likely be able to apply these principles to your own growth and development plans.
Market Segmentation
Rather than focusing on the entire marketplace in your area, you can actually grow your business by focusing on a specific subset of the market. This starts with determining who your target customers are and concentrating all of your marketing efforts at these individuals.
Big businesses have been doing this for years to remain successful and maintain market share. For instance, the energy drink company Red Bull targets a young, active, and adventurous group of people. Rather than try to market their energy drinks to everyone, the company has decided to focus its marketing efforts on a specific subset of the market and has been very successful doing so.
Although it may seem scary to cut out potential customers from your marketing efforts, remember that as a small business owner you often have limited funds available for marketing efforts anyway – so why not focus that marketing budget in the most cost-effective manner?
Developing a Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses is an excellent resource that can help you tailor a marketing plan to your targeted customers.
Leveraging Partnerships
One thing that big businesses do extraordinarily well is leveraging financial power to create partnerships as needed. As a small business owner, you probably do not have the financial capabilities of a large corporation, but this doesn’t mean you can’t negotiate with manufacturing facilities to create growth.
For example, assume you have a business that creates motor oil and your product is unique because cars only need to get an oil change once every 15,000 miles. The problem is that as a small business owner, you do not have your own manufacturing facility or a nationwide distribution channel to get your motor oil to the market.
Consider negotiating with a manufacturing facility to form a partnership. In many cases, you do not need to put up any capital to get started. Rather, you simply share some of your profits with the manufacturing facility every time you sell some of your high-performance motor oil.
Is it as easy as the big companies make it seem? Absolutely not – but it is certainly possible and presents a unique opportunity to quickly grow your business beyond your expectations.
Checklists
Big businesses are extremely complex and often have specific policies and procedures in place to manage daily operations. These checklists cover everything that needs to be done in every department on a daily basis to meet optimal production and profitability levels.
As a small business owner, you often have to wear many different hats. Even a sole proprietor has accounting, marketing, sales, and customer service (among many other tasks) to perform on a daily basis.
You can greatly improve the chances of growing your business by getting organized and remembering to hold yourself accountable at all times. This is easily accomplished by creating business process checklists for specific tasks and jobs. By taking some time to create these “checklists for success,” you can maximize your work day in an attempt to bring your business to new levels of profitability.
Productivity Booster is a course designed to teach you better time management techniques to become more efficient.
Acquisitions
As a small business owner, you may be thinking that acquisitions are better left to Fortune 500 companies. In many cases, you are right; however, there are some instances where acquisitions are totally within the reach of the small business owner.
The key is to remain attentive to market fluctuations and competition. If you see a competitor begin to falter and you think you can improve their processes, consider acquiring this business. Your customer base will expand instantly and you will have effectively increased the size of your business almost overnight.
It’s easy to let your emotions or ego play a role in your decision to acquire another business. As such, it’s important to remember that a poor purchasing decision could leave your business in bankruptcy and pave the way for competitors to take over or acquire your business.
This is a development strategy that may not work in many cases simply because the funds are not available, but if an opportunity presents itself – don’t think you can’t acquire another business just because you are a small business owner. Taking chances is one of the best ways to grow your business quickly as long as you calculate the risks carefully and make sound decisions based on financial facts; not ego or emotional factors.
Be a Leader
Many small business success stories start because the business owner was willing to take risks that set their business apart from the competition. This doesn’t mean you should make reckless decisions to stand out from the crowd; rather, it means that if there is an opportunity but no one else is doing it, be bold enough to take the leadership role.
If you own a landscaping business, for instance, look at what the competition is doing. Then take a look at what you are doing and finally, take a look at what the market is demanding that no one is doing. Maybe there is a demand for landscaping equipment that is better for the environment (i.e. electric vehicles), but no one wants to spend the money to upgrade all of their equipment to appease the market.
If it’s something you can do, be the leader and upgrade your equipment. Customers will notice that you listened to what they wanted and made changes to accommodate them. Before you know it, new customers will be lining up at the door because they don’t want to work with the companies who were late to adopt these new strategies.
Basically, don’t be afraid to solve difficult problems. If you can figure out a way to make it work, there is a lot of profit to be realized when you fix a problem before anyone else does. More importantly, your customers will respect you for making a sound decision that goes against the grain.
The interesting thing about business development is that is an extremely dynamic topic. What works one month may not work the next and what works for one business may not work for your business. However, these business development strategies remain relatively sound and have worked for large corporations for years.
For more business development strategies, check out The Smartest Ways to Jump start Your Business! Isn’t it about time you started making these strategies work for your business?
