Every startup business wants to grow into a profitable enterprise. Unfortunately, only a few manage to sustain growth for the long-term. Growing a startup requires a combination of products or services with strong demand, strategic partnerships, and the right intellectual capital.
Beyond these fundamental factors, you can ensure sustainable growth by keeping an eye on the following:
- Top Talent
A successful business is all about hiring the right people. Without the right manpower, a business can neither grow nor sustain momentum. Startups need dedicated staff who are flexible enough to accommodate changes in the business model and the shifting client needs.
To re-evaluate your talent, you need to ask yourself these questions: Does your current talent adequately meet your clients’ needs? Are they given the right opportunities to grow your business? Are you providing them with opportunities to grow?
For you to be successful in your business venture, you need to give your employees the freedom to make decisions and offer alternative strategies. According to the Endurance International Group founder, Hari Ravichandran, the firm recruits people who not only implement the set strategies but also have the ability to craft new ideas. This has played a huge role in the groups’ positive performance over the years. In essence, growth is hinged on having a bright, well-rounded team that generates fresh ideas.
- Purpose
Every startup needs a well-defined purpose. Your purpose should inform every decision, from recruitment to product development, customer management, and marketing.
A well-defined purpose allows for:
- Focus and consistency
- Strong emotional engagement with customers and partners and within the business
- Consistent innovation
- Powerful Brand
The most certain way to fail is trying to be everything to everyone. If you want to build a scalable business, you must understand the value of emotional connection to customers. Brand equity is the emotional connection with your customers that keeps them coming back. Brand building is all about cultivating and sustaining a connection with customers over time.
This can be achieved in the following ways:
- Define your target market. The most certain way to fail is to target your product to the wrong audience. Therefore, you need to do a thorough research of the market and understand what your clients need.
- Connect with your target audience. Cultivate an emotional connection with your audience based on how your product meets their needs.
- Inspire your audience. An inspiring experience or message holds more sway than one that tries to point out a product’s features. No marketing strategy can rescue a poorly cultivated brand. If you have a limited budget, you can build your brand by creating a simple content hub with valuable and compelling information targeted at your customer base.
- Right people
Finding people that fit into your startup’s culture can be hard. So when you’re hiring, don’t just seek the skilled ones. You also need to look out for the right attitude, personality, and values.
Once you’ve found the right people, help them, improve their skills and understand your brand. With a reliable team by your side, you can focus on offering overall leadership and delegate the rest.
- Strategic Partnerships
Collaborating with the right companies can push you even further. It can allow you to reach a broader range of customers and widen your business horizon effectively. It is always advisable to be on the lookout for complementary businesses to your startup endeavors. Reach out to them and propose opportunities that you can collaborate on.
- Adaptive Leadership
For your startup to sustain growth, you need to understand all the fundamental requirements at every stage of growth.
Business needs a shift of paradigms at every stage. Consequently, your leadership skills should evolve and keep up with the pace. This requires constant learning, self-awareness, and strategic thinking.
- Customer Retention
Acquiring new clients costs five times more than retaining regular patrons. This is according to Emmet and Mark Murphy in their book entitled “Leading on the Edge of Chaos.”
Essentially, a 2% increase in customer retention is equivalent to decreasing your costs by 10%. On the other hand, cutting back defection rates by 5% can result in your profitability shooting up by 25% to 130%,. However, this is still dependent on the line of business you engage in.
Bottom line:
For a startup business to grow, you need to cultivate an enduring relationship with its employees and customers. In order to achieve this, you need to have a good workforce that follows the company’s goals.
