5 STEPS FOR GROWTH
I am a bottle store owner and I do not blog for a living. I
blog for fun and I would like to share my experience with the world. I believe
I am qualified to write on business since I have run a lodge, three bottles
stores and a home-based business consultancy. I have closed the lodge and two
of the bottle stores but I still do business consultancy for a living.
You and I have seen that little shop by the roadside as you
passed. You will remember it from the time you were a child. It may be
operating as a family business and it never grew but it has never closed
either. It remains that small shop and it will never grow. I have always
wondered why small businesses remain small and when I opened my first bottle
store, I set out to live this challenge and come out with some solutions for
growth.
This has been a challenge for both rural and urban
retailers. This challenge can be overcome by adopting simple and tried
strategies that the big retailers use. This is what I did to increase my bottle
stores from one to three (and I might also tell you how I was forced to
decrease them to one in my next blogs). Here are the five solutions to growth
and they are not in order.
Increase your customer base
I know when we talk of growth in retail we visualize chains
of supermarkets and lots of customers passing through the point of sales, now
if I have one bottle store with ten crates and say 200 cigarettes it would be
crazy to open a second branch as I will not have enough capital and stock.
The short term solution will be to increase our customer
base. Customer bases are hard to increase but this can be increased by making
your business visible through improved customer relationship management. There
is nothing that beat good old advertising, sales promotions and word of mouth
as ways to increase your customer base. Customers can win and be reached through
the social media channels such as Facebook It is a must that the customer base
be increased, Twitter, Google and other emerging social media firms on the internet.
I have opened a Facebook page for my bottle store and the
responses have been wonderful and you can follow me on Facebook or like my bottle store page. My customers for the bottle store can also read
my view on my blog. You can follow me on Twitter @mbuzana1
The increase of the customer base will result in an
increase in turnover and this will spur the growth of the business and create a
basis for further solutions.
Sell more products
Once you have increased your customer base and turnover, the
next step is to increase the lines of products you sell. This will result in a further increase in both turnover
and the customer base.
Develop new products and services
This is the climax of the growth solution as you will now be
able to introduce new goods and services because you will by now have the
muscle and capital to your established customer base. In my case, I might put a
pool table or Wi-Fi in the bottle store. This process is the most important as
the business owner must read both the market and competition as he or she
introduces the new product and services.
Increase the price of your goods and services
At this point the business owner the especially if he is the
only one at a location like our perennial rural store can afford to increase the price of his product to grow his business
as he has no other option, except the last solution below.
Open a new branch
I have now come to a point where I now have adequate
management skills and in some case, skilled and experienced staff. My customer
base keeps the tills ringing and I have enough stocks and my cash flow is healthy
and I making a profit, well this is the time to get a second wife…. No, it is time to open a second branch silly!!
The secret of opening a second branch is to set it up using
existing stocks and staff. This will ensure a smooth take off. This is the last
step in the growth process and we can start the cycle to get to the next level
and open the third branch.
I have used my personal experiences to come up with this
guide and I would greatly appreciate feedback both positive and negative. I
have put my social media contacts to enable us to interact so happy hunting.
