It’s easy to spend all of your life in business considering the worst case scenario. Saving money for a rainy day, having a contingency plan if things go wrong and growing slowly but surely are all admirable traits but what if the stars suddenly aligned for you? What if the market grows and there’s a real chance for your business to push the accelerator?
Here’s some tips on how to park your natural caution and cash in when the going is good…
Recruitment
To capitalise on growth you need to add more staff to your books. Search out people with the right experience to be able to take you onto the next level. However, don’t simply be dazzled by CVs. It’s important that, by growing your business, you don’t lose sight of the ethos of your business. You need to recruit the right people, individuals who can interact with your existing staff and complement the talents they have, rather than clash with them. Recruitment is tough to get right, but an essential part of reaping the rewards to be had from market growth.
Investment
Investing in people is one thing, but you might also need to invest in other aspects of your business to be able to build and take advantage of growth in your market. Act quickly and pinpoint hardware, software and equipment that might help to take you forward. As the saying goes, you might have to speculate to accumulate.
Marketing
Even with a good product or service and favourable market conditions you’ll get nowhere if people don’t know who you are and what you do. You need a smart marketing strategy that speaks to your target market, uses the very latest and best techniques and helps you stand out from a crowd of competitors who will all want to be cashing in on the same opportunity as you.
Sponsorship
It’s important to consider how to get your brand name associated with quality. That’s where sponsorship can come in as a useful way of attaching your business’ name to something relevant and successful in the eyes of your target market. Sport is especially good for this. Big tournaments have the power to influence financial markets, breeding a confidence that rubs off on official partners and shows up on financial indices for whole markets. What better way to get people to see your brand as elite than by associating it with elite level sport?
Future vision
It’s never a good idea to lose sight of the future. When times are good you need to make provision for the future. Make sure your growth is sustainable and that you don’t lose sight of any of the natural caution that you have displayed during tougher times gone by. You will only truly reap the rewards from the market growth in the long run, when the market momentum slows. By then you should be established as a market leader with a strong client base, healthy books and the right mix of resources to succeed in any circumstances.
Surround yourself with the right people and resources, market yourself properly, establish your brand name as a mark of quality and keep one eye on the future and you will reap the rewards of market growth.