Expanding your business can give you the decisive push for your climb to success, but doing so at the wrong time could spell the ultimate end to your dreams of glory. This guide will help you understand if and when to make such a decision, and it will also explain how to successfully plan to expand your business.
Expanding business: pros and cons, strategies and opportunities
There are many reasons why an entrepreneur may decide to expand the business. You should know that, generally, this occurs when one is looking for new opportunities to increase profits. Expanding business, however, may also be in response to increased competition in your target market. Other reasons you might consider expanding your business include the need to find new cash to support its growth. Not only that: expanding the business (internationally) could also be a way to discover the potential of the business itself outside of national borders.
Now that you know why business expansion can be a good move, you need to know the answer to the question: is there an ideal time to expand a business? The focus should be on the business plan and financial data: some “clues,” in fact, can signal to you that the business is ready for this important step.
Useful “clues” are, for example, profits and costs: the former must have been consistent for several years, while the latter must have been kept consistently under control. Another aspect to consider is the following: are the products or services you offer increasingly in demand? There is, then, another key question: do you have sufficient resources to take this step, or are there outside investors ready to support you in this venture?
The benefits and opportunities associated with business expansion are also diverse: taking such a step allows you, first of all, to find new customers, reduce risks from outside (from competition to market changes), and create an economy of scale. By expanding your business, you can also amortize some costs. But that’s not all: business expansion allows you to increase your influence within the market (particularly in pricing).
I know what you are thinking: there is always a downside. You’re right: there are also potential downsides to expanding a business.
First of all, such a decision obviously requires investment, both in facilities and equipment and in the workforce. There is another aspect you need to consider in this regard: if you do not have the necessary resources to support the investment needed to expand the business, the production and final quality of your products/services will suffer.
Expansion of a business also inevitably entails a loss of control at the management level, because it makes it necessary to delegate some tasks and divide workloads among different entities.
How to expand your business: strategic approach
To prepare to expand your business you need to accomplish a number of activities. First, you need to establish your strategic goals. Remember, in this regard, that you can expand your business in several ways: one example is diversifying your offerings, but you could also target new areas of business and/or new markets.
Once you have defined your goals (both short- and long-term), you need to identify the steps by which you will achieve them and organize effective reporting systems to measure your achievements.
Another key step is to analyze the potential risks involved in business expansion, especially from a financial perspective. You need to be clear from the outset about what you will need: set aside the funds necessary to successfully complete each step of your expansion and/or seek or ask for help from investors or lenders. Not only that: be prepared to hire staff to strengthen production and service, and upgrade your management software to support increased production and coordinate all operations.
Assess business opportunities for expansion
The phase of preparing for expansion also involves choosing the best business opportunities available to you. The avenues you can pursue if you want to expand your business, in fact, are many: you can, for example, decide to develop a product or service that is complementary to what you already offer in the market or implement something totally different.
In this regard you must consider that acquiring a complementary business, or investing in one, can make it easier to develop a new product/service and expand into a new market.
Another option is partnering with a company that can offer you a specific service that is useful for your expansion.
The risks and challenges of business expansion
It bears repeating once again: before you (try to) expand your business you must be well aware of the risks and challenges this decision brings.
The biggest risk, it will be clear to you by now, is to take this step too quickly. The main challenge in this regard is time management, which, once the business is expanded, will have to be divided between the “original” and new activities. Be prepared to delegate certain tasks and operations to other team members, promoting some of them if necessary.
Personnel management is another challenge that business expansion, if carried on at too fast a pace, puts in front of you: increasing workloads, in fact, may become unsustainable for some employees, who may decide to leave the company (thus forcing you to further unplanned new hires).
Knowing the risks should not discourage you: on the contrary, now that you know what pitfalls business expansion hides, you can face this suggestive challenge even better. Draw inspiration from the words of Nelson Mandela:
“Aim high and don’t stop until you get there.”
Expanding abroad: how to internationalize a company
There is one last aspect to consider before closing this guide on how to successfully expand business: the expansion of your business may cross national borders and, therefore, you also need to know how to internationalize a business.
To carry out such an operation there are other factors to consider (in addition to those already mentioned). Expanding abroad, first of all, has the advantage of gaining access to new markets with great growth potential, where new methods of increasing production can be tested.
The challenge here, however, is to figure out which country is best suited to export your products or services. In this regard, remember to also consider the disadvantages, which are especially related to differences between countries (from time zones to cultural differences) and the inevitable slowdowns in the supply chain.
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