10 Low-Cost, High-Impact Strategies to Grow Your Business

Know who you are. What are your strengths, weaknesses? What energizes you? What drags you down? What are your values? How do you prefer to work with people? What are your long-range goals?
Know the reason your business exists. What is your vision for the business? Where do you see yourself and your business 5, 10, 20 years from now?
Your culture is your strategy. For instance, if your desire is to innovate and lead change, that vision will permeate your whole business, including HR, marketing, and customer interaction.

Recognize and reward employees for their contributions. Acknowledge their effort when you see them doing something you like.
Provide overall cultural and baseline organizational (technical) training to everyone.
Further focus on developing key employees (your best performers.)
Don’t just delegate, elevate!
Be honest and fair with all employees.

Surprise your customers by going beyond their expectations.
Listen to what your customers say. Use surveys and direct feedback to understand customer needs and continuously improve services. Start with where you are now and don’t stop improving.
Offer personalized experiences to build loyalty and increase customer retention. Personalized service can be as basic as smiling and calling your customer by name.
Think lifetime value of your customers.

Your best (and cheapest) marketing will come from who you are (you and your business), and what you do.
For existing customers, overly communicate to them. Offer discounts. Introduce new products or services to them. Encourage satisfied customers to refer others to your business.
For potential customers, keep an eye on what’s going on online, and adjust accordingly. Potential customers will have read reviews and will already have a purchasing bias (one way or the other) toward you.
It’s tempting to jump on new customers like a hungry wolf, especially if you’re a small business. Instead, get to know them. Overdeliver value in every interaction, especially early on!
Push advertising (or promotional) dollars as close to the purchaser as possible. Example: a coupon at POS versus a newspaper ad.

Create useful content that addresses customer pain points and positions you as a helpful resource. This does not have to be lengthy.
Find the watering holes. Where are your current and potential customers? Go to those places and share your story.

Stay informed by keeping up with industry trends and best practices through online courses, webinars, and blogs.
Join business networks. Participate in local business groups and online forums to gain insights and make valuable connections.
Collaborate by partnering with other small businesses to share resources, knowledge and experience.
Substitute “possibility” for “positivity.” While positive thinking is valuable, possibility thinking offers a more dynamic approach. For example: “Given our current reality, what are the best options we have moving forward?”

Have a system in place for providing financial reports. Some examples: Profit and Loss (P&L) Statements, Balance Sheets, Cash Flow and Accounts Receivable.
Develop and maintain a budget to help monitor cash flow and forecast future revenue/expenses.
Control costs by identifying and eliminating unnecessary expenses. Since things tend to slip in over time, do an annual audit of all your expenses.

Identify and measure your business’ key areas. Address issues as they arise in your people or systems.
Take the Kaizen approach. Implement small, incremental changes regularly for continuous improvement. Train your team to think in terms of continuous improvement.

Audit and document the key systems in your business. Get buy-in from your team by inviting them into the process.
“Hire” new processes in the same way you would hire a new employee. Do not bring a new system (or process) into your business unless it brings a measurable benefit and saves time and/or money.
Utilize free or low-cost tools like Google Workspace for collaboration, Trello for project management, and QuickBooks for accounting. New business apps are constantly being introduced, so look into new ones on occasion.
Use tools, apps to prioritize tasks based on urgency and importance.
Use automation tools to streamline repetitive processes.
Learn as much as you can about AI, or have someone on your team do that. And then keep learning about it. At a minimum, AI should be creating efficiencies in your business.

Constantly adjust. Time balance is based on continuous micro or macro adjustments.
This dynamic balancing process is actually between the demands of your life (internal and external), and your available resources. These things change over time.
You will always feel better and more energized when you focus at least part of your time on important but not urgent tasks. This concept (from Stephen R. Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) helps us accomplish long-term growth in any area that is important to us. This applies to everything from running a business to learning how to play a musical instrument.
Managing your self-care (emotional, physical, mental, spiritual) provides you with the muscles and energy you need to keep the “time management” bike upright and moving forward.
Have the end in mind. You can’t make adjustments if you don’t know where you’re going (big picture and small.)
Delegate tasks to employees or outsource to free up your time for strategic, valuable activities that only you can provide.

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