Growth is scaling your business in line with your goals and sustainability parameters. It can include more substantive financing and capital injection, as well as market and customer base growth.
In this section we review:
Nicola is the founder of a handcrafted business and is an online business mentor and coach helping makers, artists, and crafters in business with her unique approach. Nicola founded her handcrafted business in 2013, after running successful and award-winning handcrafted stationery businesses for eight years.
Nicola started off as a photographer in the days of darkroom development before her sight changed and she made her first pivot into marketing obtaining certification at the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
Her decision to start a family then prompted another pivot into her handmade stationery business.
In the beginning, she tried to serve everyone, until they realised it was unsustainable, and that they would have to niche so she can do bulk orders. they then niched into weddings and funerals as they could coordinate bulk orders through both! She worked with Funeral Directors and Bridal shops to consolidate her efforts into a few key strategic partners.
Nicola rewarded her partners too, with a 10% referral fee. The approach was phenomenally successful due to personal word of mouth recommendations, and they were able to display her work as well.
Nicola then pivoted into building a digital service business and a platform for photos, and then built her coaching business for handmade businesses.
Nicola’s strengths were identifying viable niches, building a strategic incentivised network, and of course having a high-quality offer that people are willing to refer to.
Bridgete is a product entrepreneur enthusiast with over 12 years’ experience she started her first online retail business in 2008, working from her spare bedroom with 2 toddlers at the time.
She scaled her business to seven figures in a 6000 square foot warehouse with numerous staff and spent many weekends packing orders. She is now building an online retail business as well.
She started her business after the birth of her first child. She wanted more time at home so opted for voluntary redundancy from Dell computers.
She wanted to find the ultimate product to sell and started exploring eBay. The journey started with educational books and fictional books for children. She developed relationships with publishers in London, and her proposition was creating bespoke book collections. This went well for 8 years, until some publishers started competing and eroding the margins for the business.
Bridgete pivoted again to project management, but her heart wanted to remain in entrepreneurship, so she produced a new idea.
Bridgete loves a good laugh and decided to get into designing a line of fancy dresses, fashioning items based on retro looks and fabrics as well as new creations. She built this business with her daughter and imported work from China.
For Bridgete, she approached her businesses by finding a problem to solve within the context of something she loved. Her fun-loving nature took her to develop products with “rude sentiments” too!
Bridgete has built up experiences having traded on eBay, Amazon, Alibaba, and her own website.
Her advice about working with Amazon, eBay and the other players is to be aware that they will push their own products over yours, and the better you craft a niche, the better it is for you. She recommends Etsy, as you can carve your own niche there, stipulating the design of the products and the source of your supply etc.
Bridgete’s latest pursuit is building an account with her dogs as the stars on Instagram. Be ready to explore your interests on any front!
When I started my service-based business, I knew my personal connections would be key. So far, 100% of my paying customers have come from relationships I have built either from a lifetime, or from months of consistency and effort, showing up with content on social media or through my engagement with their content.
I did not anticipate that every customer relationship would take so long to build, but I also did not anticipate a global pandemic. Given the time it takes to invest in relationships, it makes sense to me to invest in strategic relationships as much as possible.
Relationship Building for services
As with everything, it starts with understanding the profile of the clients you want to work with, and mapping what you know about them. You can easily use demographic information like age, gender, location, but I have found a more granular way to profile my ideal client, and its stage of life or career, suppressed ideals and views, expat lifestyles. I have found these 3 to be the factors that most draw my ideal clients to me because these features are me.
The next is in the value you give. In a world where knowledge is increasingly free, you need to design a business model where you are not just selling knowledge. This means you are trading in experiences, your own time and work output, or in an emotional reset and support you can provide.
The starting point for strong relationship building is reading, then listening. It works best if before you engage with someone who fits your ideal client, research them. Learn all about them. Then when you engage, listen with every fibre of your being. Ask questions. Explore their points and side comments. And when you offer a service, make sure it’s targeted to fit their needs and means.
Strategic alliances and strategic partnerships are fancy terms for business friendships. From politics to private businesses these have been around for an exceedingly long time. Key modern-day drivers for strategic partnerships are sharing resources, assets, technology, costs, and capability or to scale more rapidly.
They are much sought after, but also do not always work. They can take legal forms, such as minority equity investment, JVs, or contracts, or sometimes the formation of a new entity for the purpose. They work best when they are mutually beneficial, and the risks, and governance are also equitably shared.
COVID-19 has changed the playing field massively, but many of us have not pivoted and adjusted to compensate. The trends that have accelerated are:
It suggests that if you are not into technology, you are at a disadvantage when we look to the future.
The types of strategic alliances that can be useful to sustainable businesses are:
To explore these points, it is advisable to:
Business development is the art of looking forward, and anticipating opportunities for your business, as well as capabilities that will be needed to leverage the future.
It is also at a foundation level about making connections and developing a consistent flow of leads and potential customers for your business.
Business Development is the Opportunity, and sales is the conversion.
When you have low-priced items, you want to design a system that automates sales as much as possible. This may include listing your product or service on sites that do the marketing for you.
For higher-priced or higher volume items, you want to engage with your buyers in a more substantial way.
Steps to consider in selling:
· Position yourself or service as the answer.