Is your company growing? If so, you’ve got good cause for optimism, albeit cautious optimism at that. Expansion is promising on the face of it but also poses its own challenges. You don’t want your firm to overreach itself like Icarus, the mythological Greek figure who flew too close to the sun.
Therefore, while a wide array of options may be opening up for your business, you need to choose between them carefully. A wrong step here could ultimately force you to take two steps back – if not more. Here are some options you should consider for keeping your business growth sustainable.
Looking out for the “green light” to expansion
Deciding when exactly to expand can be rather like deciding when to strike a ball when playing football; it’s never a wholly straightforward process, as it depends on many variables. However, it would be a promising sign if your business has been profitable for years in a growing industry.
Business coach Rhett Power also raises these questions in an Inc. article: “Do you have a loyal customer base asking for new products or more convenient access to your business? Do you routinely have more business than you can comfortably handle?” Hopefully, yes on both counts!
Expanding overseas
If you feel as though you are reaching saturation point with your current hold on the UK market, why not look abroad to see if there remains some unchartered territory there? You could learn from the example of Zzish, a software company in the educational tech (EdTech) sector.
“We realised that the economics of selling to the UK schools market makes it incredibly hard for UK EdTech companies to scale up, so we decided to focus on the US and Asia, which have much better market economics,” Zzish CEO and founder Charles Wiles explained to The Telegraph about his rationale for looking overseas.
Partnering with the right companies
You might have your sights on taking over the world, but you can’t do it alone – at least not initially. You might need some other companies, more established than yours in their fields, to give you a leg-up – and a few obvious companies, like Amazon, eBay and Facebook, present themselves.
The first two of those could serve almost entirely as your firm’s commerce and sales arms, while social media sites like Facebook can level the playing field when it comes to advertising. You could also consider whether your firm should make its own products or sell those from suppliers instead.
Employing the right people, too
If you’re beginning to feel overloaded with work, that could be your cue to recruit a few extra pairs of hands. However, you should recruit before you formally expand the business itself, such as to a new office or region, as the process of onboarding a new employee is time-consuming.
On the subject of “a new office”, that could be a serviced office from BE Offices, allowing your workforce to benefit from various useful amenities already set up, as described by Startups.co.uk.
