By Evan Vitale
No matter your business and what products and services you offer to customers and clients, you’ll eventually reach a stage in which you’ll have to decide if you want to expand and offer new products and services or if you want to specialize in a few specific areas.
There’s something to be said about both.
In order to expand, you need to fully understand your current market. Are your current customers seeking products and services that you don’t currently offer? If so, how many? If you expand, are there valid opportunities to increase your customer base and increase sales?
One of the things business owners should do (and most don’t) is to track statistics on current customers. You should know and understand their behavior. What do they purchase and how often? What kinds of marketing efforts yield new customers? What are the sales numbers from new customers each month? Are those new customers returning customers? How many new potential customers visit your location (or ask for a sales/introduction meeting) and never purchase anything or become a new client?
Tracking all of these various types of stats will give you a better idea for expansion possibilities.
Consult with your professional team. This primarily includes your banker; your accountant and your attorney. They can offer you valuable insight into expansion possibilities. You’ll definitely want to talk to your business coach or mentor, should you have one.
Give yourself some time to relax and clear your mind before you make an expansion decision. Make sure you still have the same drive and fire your business before you expand. If you don’t, expansion will be difficult. It will be more work; possibility more problems; more difficult customers; more meetings, etc. Are you ready to face all these challenges that will come before you with expansion?
In our next blog, we’ll continue this discussion of expansion.