Post Image
  As the year draws to a close, it’s only proper that businesses take stock of how they’ve fared over the past twelve months. But it’s equally important for them to begin planning for the coming year. Even if they’ve fallen short of their own expectations, they can lay out the groundwork for a much better future.
Read more about Business
If you run a business, you could score major wins next year if you plan for growth in it. Here, we’ll share with you six steps to strengthen, expand, and position your business for growth in the coming business period.

Identify And Magnify High Performers

What products or segments of your business recorded growth this year? Which ones raked in the most sales, revenues and profit? You should be able to identify them by examining your financial records. If you’re certain that they are popular with your typical customers, the smart thing to do would be to devote more time, effort, and finances to making and delivering them. The reasoning behind this is simple: the more popular products you sell, the higher your sales/revenues you’ll gain, and other factors held constant.

Discover And Prune Low Performers

While you channel more resources to your better-performing products and services, you should also investigate the ones that do poorly. Find out why they haven’t sold much. If the problem is something you can fix at an affordable cost, you may try to tackle it. But if it isn’t, you should shrink your budget for them in order to free up more resources for the high performers. This will increase the returns your business makes per naira invested in it.
Sign up for the Connect Nigeria daily newsletter

Note The Resources At Your Disposal

We have already hinted at the best way to allocate resources to your business—give more to high performers, and less to items that generate little profit. But your approach to this will depend on the volume of those resources at your disposal. If you don’t have much, you’ll want to devote most of what’s available to proven profit generators. But if there’s more than enough to take care of your obligations, you may consider adding new products that show some promise to your existing collection.

Make Projections For Growth

Besides evaluating your resources, you should also examine other factors that could determine your potential for growth: market conditions, the present and changing tastes of potential and actual customers, and the strengths and weaknesses of competitors. By analyzing these data, you’ll be better able to determine the best possible growth scenarios for your business’s growth in the coming year. This in turn could help you come up with measurable results to aim for.

Adopt A Growth Strategy

There are a number of growth strategies you could adopt going forward. You may battle for a greater share of the market you’re currently serving, with your existing products or services. Or you could reach out to new markets with those products. There’s also the option of introducing new products to the market you’ve been operating in. Settle for a strategy that you can afford, and one that aligns with your vision and aims.
Register to attend the CN Business Mixer

Prepare For Possible Challenges

It would be great if you’re able to saunter through the coming year without any bumps on the way. But it’s wise to prepare for challenges, just in case they show up. Some of them will be predictable. For example, you’ll hear about the likelihood of an economic downturn in the near future if you track the news around the economy closely enough. Changing consumer tastes may also signal the need for you to tweak your services to meet evolving trends.

Final Words

There’s a lot that your business can achieve if you plan its growth in the coming year. The extent to which you’re able to realize your goals will depend on the resources available to you, and how well you’re able to deploy them across your business’s many facets. You can follow the steps we’ve talked about here to plot a path for your business’s growth in the near future. Featured Image Source: York IE
Got a suggestion? Contact us: editor@connectnigeria.com  

You might also like:
This article was first published on 20th December 2022

ikenna-nwachukwu

Ikenna Nwachukwu holds a bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He loves to look at the world through multiple lenses- economic, political, religious and philosophical- and to write about what he observes in a witty, yet reflective style.


Comments (0)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *