As a business entity, whether you are trying to increase the market share, improve profitability or increase staff, every company encounters challenges and pain during the growth process. However, if you wish to speed your business growth, it’s important to know your company’s business growth stage. Having the information on whether or not your company is maturing or isn’t moving ahead is essential. You would require a fine measuring system for making a detailed comparison between your competitor organizations, clients as well as partners. Business growth depends largely on superior customer relationships, which can be achieved by implementing a robust CRM like Salesforce. It makes sense to get in touch with a Salesforce consulting partner to know more about the platform.
Foundation Stage: Though, this stage might appear to be the start-up stage for a company, there are several businesses that have been around for quite some time now and cannot break even month on month. Businesses in the foundation stage require strong leadership and company management that are focused on helping these organizations move out of the foundation stage to make real profits.
Survival Stage: The shift at this stage is moving from breaking even every month to actual profitability i.e. ROI. In fact, businesses should start expanding the system created during the foundation stage to fulfill the profit requirement they might have set for their business. To become financially independent and free, a certain level of income has to be generated by a business. Apart from this, they should broaden their horizon when it comes to business knowledge failing which their business will begin to stagnate.
Self-Sustainability: When an organization reaches this stage, it starts generating profits on its own. This provides them with the financial stability to choose their next goal. Self-sustainability means that a business is allowed to run on its own. In fact, it will continue to be the same size till they are ready to act on their succession plan. Growing rapidly means organizations choose to expand their business into a large establishment with the support of an executive team. However, owners should be careful as this is when they might get caught up between survival and self-sustainability. They should rather take a self-sustainability test to ensure whether their business is in the self-sustainable stage or still stuck in the survival stage. If they are still stuck in the ‘survival’ stage, it might be difficult if not impossible to do what they want to.
Rapid Growth: Owners choose to expand their business into a large establishment as opposed to keeping the business the same size. In this growth stage, huge sums of capital are required as this stage requires more equipment, people, and materials. The resources required to cater to these new customers seem ever-increasing. If executed properly, a small entity can grow up to become a big corporation. However, in a converse situation, a company can experience a downfall.
Maturity: Once a company achieves rapid growth, it gradually moves into maturity. However, inadequately prepared management and a saturated market can hinder business growth. Often in the maturity stage, organizations fail to react to major market shifts following which businesses fail miserably. On being managed properly, businesses can diversify and continue to grow. In the maturity stage, businesses explore new markets.
Final Words:
The business growth of a company is a direct reflection of its ability to grow its business. However, an assessment of their current business growth stage will help them determine where exactly they should focus to grow their business and take it to the next growth stage. If organizations are leveraging technology solutions like Salesforce to move ahead in their business growth journey, it’s prudent to get in touch with a reliable Salesforce Partner.