When business owners get bogged down in the day to day running of their businesses, the businesses original expansion plans can end up overlooked or put on hold for another day. The problem of course is that those growth plans can end up on hold for too long which may ultimately cause the failure of an enterprise as usually growth is a prerequisite for long term business survival.

While there may be many ways to look at achieving growth it is essential to have a real strategy underpinning them all. That strategy may be viewed in two broad timescales, one for short term growth and another for the longer term view.

The short term will obviously focus on the more immediate things you can do to keep a business growing such as how you might increase the numbers of customers you have, how you interact with those customers so as to encourage repeat business or referrals, maybe it involves looking at your existing marketing methods and it might also include a review of some of your processes to try and make them more efficient. All of those things can produce a little boost in business profitability in the short term so they should all be reviewed regularly in any event.

The long term plan for business growth is usually planned for multiple years at a time. Depending on the particular business activity and also on how established the business is, this long term planning might be a two or three year view or for those with far reaching vision as long as 5 to 10 years.

The long term plan is of course all about the bigger picture view and less focussed on the detail of the short term one. It may look at the results of the shorter term plans and envisage a scaling up of those plans on the macro level. For example, a longer term plan might look at how a business can be scaled up by adding more employees and opening new outlets. It might state a goal of growing business in multiples rather than incremental increases through new product development or marketing overseas.

Every business will have its own unique circumstances so how each one plans its growth will vary substantially. It could be detrimental to plan growth in a predetermined fashion just because another business was successful that way, you must consider your own business circumstances when drafting your growth plans both short and long term.

No matter what plans you formulate you should also remember to allow for some flexibility as opportunities do sometimes materialise unexpectedly. It would be a shame to be so rigidly bound to a plan as to not have the ability to respond to an interesting opportunity that arises! This may mean leaving your plan to one side for a little while to capitalise on the opportunity but that does not mean you need to lose sight of the goals you set. Being flexible is after all one of the benefits of small business, it should be possible to be flexible while also working to the business growth strategy.

See our site smallbusinesswizardry.com for more on small business and check our business planning section for lots of actionable info on business growth.

See our site http://smallbusinesswizardry.com for more on small business and check our business planning section for lots of actionable info on business growth.

Author Bio: See our site smallbusinesswizardry.com for more on small business and check our business planning section for lots of actionable info on business growth.

Category: Business
Keywords: small business, business growth, growing a business