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Adjusting the building blocks of your business to help future growth

Help set your business up for future growth by making sure the building blocks of your business like, existing customers, cash flow, finding new customers, and automating sales processes, are locked in.

3 minute read

Before you race ahead and start exploring new markets, developing new products or services, and ramping up your existing business, it’s useful to know that behind you, your business has strong building blocks allowing it to efficiently tick over and do the right things behind the scenes.

Here are the four building blocks of your business that are worthwhile checking before a major growth push.

1. Tighten the focus on best customers

It’s tempting to recruit as many new customers as you can when demand is high, but it’s also wise to make sure that your existing customers are happy and coming back.

Existing customers are possibly easier to work with as they understand the way your business works, and unless something goes dramatically wrong, are unlikely to switch to someone new.

You could tighten your relationship with your existing customers by:

• setting up an email newsletter to keep in touch
• referring work to them if they are another business
• forwarding exclusive special offers
• sending early notifications of new products or services
• running exclusive workshops, webinars, or product launches
• identifying pain points and proactively solving the issue.

The main idea is to keep your customers loyal and proactively working to help them is a sure-fire way to keep your existing customer base.

2. Effectively attract new customers

In a perfect world every dollar you spend on marketing will provide a return, but it’s often impossible to find out, or the evidence is too hard to tag to a specific action. Buying online advertising and counting the number of converted leads could work, where posting in social media channels without direct calls to action could be much harder to quantify.

To be more effective in attracting new customers, you could:

• target those with similar needs to your existing customer profile
• find leads within your existing networks
• add content that solves customer pain points to your website
• optimise your website with keywords for search engines
• collaborate with businesses with customers similar to yours.

3. Using technology to automate processes

As more orders pour in, you’ll want to know your business can handle the growth and that everything ordered will be produced, delivered, and paid for with minimum fuss. The way customers make purchases using new technology and changing customer behaviour also makes it a moving feast, where there are increasingly more sales channels available (selling online, third-party sites, subscriptions, licensing, and joint ventures).

You could make it easier to meet the demand if sales grow fast by:

• automating the sales channel (calls in, calls out, queries)
• accepting in-person and/or over the phone payments (for example PayClip^)
• establishing an online presence and enabling ecommerce solutions
• implementing a credit strategy to reduce bad debts
• auditing your existing process, identifying bottlenecks, and solving them.

Automating your processes should leave you you more time to focus your time and efforts on growing your business without too much worry.

4. Tighten up cash flow

Every sale should contribute profit to the bottom line. If you’re juggling multiple business segments, customers, and hundreds of products and services, it’s not always straightforward to keep track of cash flow. In addition, often when businesses grow, it’s natural for small incremental mistakes or inefficiencies creep in which can dilute cash flow.

You can look to fix any cash flow inefficiencies by:

• conducting regular (and unannounced) inventory audits to identify wastage
• maintaining tight control on secure areas to reduce theft
• adopting industry software to streamline processes
• using accounting software to track daily cash flow and red flag any deterioration
• requesting deposits or progress payments to reduce money owed
• using credit scoring systems and setting appropriate credit limits to minimise any losses
• having strong systems to reduce fraud (including cyber fraud).

You could also improve your cash flow by increasing prices and reducing costs across your whole business.

If there are growth opportunities for your business in the future, consider reviewing the building blocks of your existing business first. It can help you avoid scrambling to get work finished and drowning in demand, helping to ensure that every new sale is profitable, delivered on time, and within budget.

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This article is solely for information purposes and is not intended to be financial advice.  If you need help, please contact BNZ or your financial adviser. Neither BNZ nor any person involved in this article accepts any liability for any direct or indirect loss or damage arising out of the use of, or reliance on, all or any part of the content.

References to third party websites are provided for your convenience only. BNZ accepts no responsibility for the availability or content of such websites.

^PayClip terms and conditions apply.