All owners want their businesses to grow. Many of us invest time and energy into planning how we will grow our businesses.
The biggest problem with growing a business is neither the lack of desire or planning.
It’s finding and implementing the right strategies. There simply are too few sound strategies that owners can easily and effectively apply in their own businesses.
The Good I.D.E.A.
One of the best approaches to planning business growth is the I.D.E.A. concept: Identify Develop, Evaluate, Act.
Instead of re-inventing the growth-strategies wheel, I offer the following outline of the approach.
IDENTIFY—Specifically What Would You Like to Achieve?
Like all planning processes, this one starts with identification.
Specifically you start by identifying the growth you want: increased clients, revenue per client, sales volume etc. Regardless of what you plan to increase, it’s important to establish a clear measure for this improvement.
Identify the growth as measurable amounts such as “10%” or “15 over last year”. This yields an objective measure against which you can evaluate the results of your growth strategies.
