When you are growing a small business, you’ve got to be business savvy, a bit frugal, and maybe even slightly cunning. After all, you’re trying to gain market share from peers and survive. That takes a good amount of tenacity and pure bloody-mindedness to not give up when a less steely eyed person would have done so.
In this article, we cover of few of the things you can do to grow your business while keeping an eye on expenses too.
Launch New Services When Spotting Gaps in the Market
One way to stand out from the crowd is to find a gap in the market that can be exploited by offering a new service. It’s necessary to be careful when doing this – specially the need to understand your market well.
You should ask yourself when finding a gap, is there a gap because it’s not profitable to offer this type of service, or is it not needed? There could be a good reason why no one is competing in this space. Don’t be the proverbial fifth bar to open in the same venue believing you’ll get a different result!
Validate the new service idea through reliable market research. Ascertain what is believed to be the best approach to take and what service is needed by customers right now. If you have an existing business with a loyal customer base for other services, then survey them to see if the new idea is a hit with them or not.
Use an MVP Model to Reduce Upfront Costs on New Services
Despite checking with existing customers and perhaps doing some market research, look for approaches to the new service to provide a minimal viable product. Don’t over invest in an as yet unproven idea.
Remember: What people say they would be interested in buying and what they’ll part good money to receive as a service are two very different things. Previous customers aren’t even being intentionally deceptive either. Often, people say one thing and do another.
Reduce your upfront commitment to the new service to limit any investment and losses. Create a Minimal Viable Product to try out. Piggyback off existing availability like a customer service team or sales staff to cut early commitments while soft launching the new service.
Keep Expenses Down While Growing
To allow your business enough space to grow, cash reserves are needed to try different ideas and invest more heavily in ones that show promise. To have the money to do so, cut out unnecessary expenses and get the best business deal possible on others.
For instance, Utility Bidder can help provide a more competitive quote for business electricity to reduce your regular bills to keep the lights on, the PCs powered up and the heaters working. To learn about saving money on business electricity, find out more details by clicking here.
By trying new avenues to create success in business, not being afraid to fail and move on quickly, along with prudent spending, companies can grow faster while avoiding pitfalls. Given the fallibility of companies over the early years, it behoves business owners to be both adventurous for growth opportunities and smart with expenditures too.
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