Your business is your life. You’ve spent years perfecting your strategy and working on your sales. But the statistics could be against you. New businesses have a huge failure rate. Meanwhile, increased competition and an unpredictable market could pose significant threats to established companies.
So how can you make sure that your company maintains its longevity when competitors might struggle?
Manage growth
Although growth is a positive when it comes to business, uncontrolled and extreme growth won’t be beneficial. If your business starts to grow too quickly, you might find that you can’t afford to finance your ambitions, leaving you in a precarious financial position. You may also spend more time on recruitment than necessary and not enough on other areas, including production.
Too much growth too quickly can also mean a slip in operational standards. And when this happens, you might end up seeing dangerous working practices and the potential for multiple workplace accidents. This can then have a huge knock-on effect on your business’ reputation, fracturing your relationship with your customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.
In order to manage your company’s growth, make sure you can finance it. Appoint strong leaders who have a complete knowledge of the organization and what it can afford. When it comes to growth, companies that prioritise quality over quantity can see greater longevity.
Boost motivation
As you will have been told a thousand time, your employees are your greatest resource. So to keep them on your side and ready to maintain your company’s standing in the marketplace, you’ll need to ensure you’re giving them enough reason to stay motivated.
Your company doesn’t just have to fight against competitors for customer business – it also competes for the best talent. This means that you need to offer your employees something they can’t get at those other firms – whether that’s the type of work they do, enhanced benefits packages or higher salaries. Whatever your workers want, make sure you’re providing it.
However, that only gets workers through the doors and into your company. When they’re on the payroll, you’ll need to make sure they feel motivated enough to keep working hard. This means ensuring top performers are recognised and rewarded for their efforts. And don’t think this applies to just the general workforce – you will need to keep your leadership team motivated too.
Stay realistic
You may have wild ambitions for your organisation. But it’s not always a smart idea to follow these without question. In much the same way as you’ll need to control your company’s growth, you’ll need to stay realistic if you want to ensure your business can stick around in the long run.
Knowing where your company’s limit is isn’t restricting it – it’s ensuring you can plan and implement a realistic strategy and realistic goals. Thinking that you can reach 1,000 orders in a month when your capabilities mean you can reach 600 will only lead to your firm disappointing customers. And in a world where customers can put every opinion and thought online, you should do all you can to avoid disappointing them.
Make sure you plan for potential downturns in the market and even the global economy. The world is currently dealing with a crisis that could have a huge impact on business longevity. Ensuring your company has planned for the worst case scenario will give it an advantage in weathering the storm.
