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8 Things You Can Do to Achieve the “Survival” Stage of Small Business Growth

June 8, 2011 By 1 Comment

In order to achieve success in any small business you must pass through several stages along the way.  You cannot skip a step.  Frequently business get stuck for just that reason.  The entrepreneur isn’t aware of these stages therefore he/she is focused on the wrong objectives for their stage of growth.  Focus on the right things and success becomes much easier!

In a previous post title, The Search for Growth Continues I introduced the 5 stages of small business growth from Churchill and Lewis’s research.  Churchill and Lewis also identified a significant fact that both owner and company factor are critical to a business’ growth.

4 factors in each category that impact a small business’ growth:

Owner Growth Factors:

  • Owner Goals
  • Operational Abilities
  • Managerial Abilities
  • Strategic Abilities

Company Growth Factors:

  • Financial Resources
  • Personnel Resources
  • System Resources
  • Business Resources

The first step is getting from the Existence stage to the Survival stage.  Here are the requirements on which you must focus under each of the previous categories if you wish to successfully achieve the “survival” stage of growth in your business:

Owner goals
  • Profitability: it is critical that the owner set a profit goal for the company to plan from and strive to achieve.
Operational Abilities
  • Owner still controls ops or sales and may have 1 key manager in the other function.
Managerial Abilities
  • The owner must begin to delegate, however strong direction and control still exist with the owner.
  • Trial and error as a management style still continues.
Strategic Abilities
  • Owners financial abilities must evolve and begin concentrating on cash flow forecasting.
Company Factors:
Financial Resources
  • Formal planning is cash forecasting
  • Cash begins taking the pressure off from the existence stage
  • Credit is still difficult to come by alternative lending sources are required.

Capital sources include:

  • owner, friends, family
  • suppliers
  • customers
  • government grants
Personnel Resources
  • “Big Dogs” may emerge—loyal high-producers who build the business exponentially in this time of rapid first-stage growth
System Resources
  • Simple organization structure typically exists
  • Systems are minimal with evolution & implementation in early stages.
  • System focus at this stage indicates high probability for success in future stages of growth.
Business Resources
  • Begin to establish a market
  • Assets may begin to increase if owner is “asset-aware”
  • Right business model could make business salable

While there are other objectives which entrepreneurs to focus, these factors are non-negotiable.  If you don’t achieving these key factors your business will stagnate and can get stuck here for years and sometime even decades.

Do you recognize anything in this list that you may have forgotten?  If you corrected it how long do you think it would take to achieve the stability of the survival stage?  For those of you that have gotten past this point in your business, was there something that held you up for a time?  What was it and how did you get past it?

In the coming weeks see more posts in this series as we detail more of what is required to get past your current stage of growth and achieve the higher more profitable stages of your small business growth.  If you cannot wait, I suggest you download copy of the DE, Inc. Small Business Growth Matrix from our website.  You’ll find all 5 stage defined within this document.

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About Dino Eliadis

Dino Eliadis has over 25 years experience in creating and leading high performance teams and organizations. His talents spans many different industries where he focuses on assisting small business owners to make measurable improvements in overall business performance thus increasing their “book value” by Tuning the Revenue Engine. The result: increased productivity and improved revenue growth, leading to maximized profits.

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  1. Entrepreneurs Build an Asset NOT Just a Job — Your Small Business Growth says:
    April 8, 2012 at 7:58 am

    [...] of the Existence Stage of the small business growth cycle.  Next, grow your business through the Survival Stage.  Successfully achieve the Success Stage and you can retire from your business whenever you [...]

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