Think your business is ready for expansion?
If you’ve been running a business for a while now and things are going well, you might be toying with the idea of expanding. Can your business survive the additional costs and weight of expansion? There are a few things you need to consider:
Goals
Your business needs to be a position where you are at least hitting or even surpassing your goals. If your brand is well-recognised and your sales are growing then it still might not be the right time for expansion unless you can be confident that you’re meeting your goals.
Management Systems
Before taking on the extra burden of expansion, are your systems robust enough to cope? If you have a large customer or member base, systems like membership management software can improve efficiency, decrease the amount of paperwork you deal with, enable you to target marketing more effectively and make administration a smoother process. You should also consider streamlining with Visitor sign in system software from Ofec. A Visitor sign in system can make your business more efficient.
Cash Flow
Expanding will hopefully bring money flowing into your business but it also costs so you need to be in a good position with regards to cash flow as you might be carrying the business financially until sales catch up with the investments.
Marketing
Your marketing network should be strong and effective in order to achieve a successful expansion. Starting a business locally means you will have had referrals from friends and family, the better the service you offer, the more your local reputation grows and improves. Setting up in a new area means you won’t necessarily have these benefits and you’ll have to start from scratch again.