Top 3 Ways to Grow Your Business

With so much to do in your business and due to the fast-paced nature of the world, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Understanding not just where your business fits within your industry, but also taking time out to consider your long-term strategy and where business opportunities may lie is key in growing your business. According to the CEO peer group experts, here are the top three ways the most successful CEOs continually launch their businesses to new heights.

1. Stay abreast of the market. This may sound like a “common sense” one, but often CEOs don’t invest the time or the resources into continually doing market research. If you don’t dedicate the effort to learning about trends in your industry, studying new entrants into the market, and even reading up on new technology, you could easily be left behind. Being able to also take a step back and analyze your customer, truly knowing them inside and out is something that not many companies are doing. You must thoroughly understand both the business landscape and the consumer landscape in which your business operates to be able to strategically position your business to grow.
2. Elicit employee-generated ideas. How often are you tapping into the creative genius of your workers? If you’re like most CEOs, probably not enough. Your employees, especially those that are in customer-facing roles have a wealth of knowledge and can help pinpoint areas that need to be improved or even new opportunities. Too often business ideas and decisions are made from those who are the farthest from the customer. However, when you invert this approach and start with ideas from those closest to your customer, you can easily generate innovative approaches for new products, services or marketing that you would not have thought of otherwise. And, with a new spin on things, the sky’s the limit as to how much your business can expand.
3. Study new technology. In today’s world, technology is evolving so fast that if you aren’t up with the times, you could easily be using antiquated systems. This doesn’t mean that you need to upgrade every time a new piece of software comes out. However, investing time in staying current with what options are available to increase your business efficiency and productivity is an important part of making sure your company is primed to compete. Reviewing your systems at least once every 18 months is good practice to evaluate its effectiveness, especially compared to what newer technology may be available. Also staying on top of how your employees are leveraging technology and if you are getting the maximum utilization from your systems is key in justifying the cost. No need in paying for the bells and whistles if they are outside of the scope of what your company needs.

What other ways have you found helpful in strategically positioning your company to explore new business opportunities? We’d love to compare notes.