Many business owners enter the New Year with a goal of growing their business.  But, making this resolution creates many objectives that if not addressed early in the year will leave you without your resolution for growth unacheived at the end of the year!

Many sales consultants will have you think that growth = more sales!  While this is true, it’s only one piece of a much more complicated equation.

For example, does your operation have the capacity to sell more?  If not, then how will you add more capacity?  Do you have the capital necessary to add the needed equipment and employees to expand your production?  If not, how will you get the needed capital to accomplish the needed expansion?

You have to answer all these questions before you ever begin thinking about more sales!  Oh and where will the extra leads come from that you need before you can sell more?  That’s not sales.  That’s marketing, and if you leave it up to sales then you’re leaving your sales numbers to chance!

You see, growth affects every aspect of your business. So you need to answer all the questions before you get started.  If you don’t you’ll create more fires than you care to handle which in turn takes your focus off what you need to be doing and putting your New Year resolution for growth in jeopardy.

7 Questions for Successful Business Growth

Here is a list of questions you need to answer before you charge off on your resolution.  They are also in the order which you need to answer them too.  So don’t jump around.  Don’t try to answer #3 if you can’t answer #1 or #2 first.

      1. Do you know exactly how much unused capacity you have in your production department?
      2. Do you know when you will have to add more capacity to your operation?
      3. How much will it cost to add additional capacity and where will this capital come from?
      4. Do you know how many additional closed sales deals you need to sell your unused capacity?
      5. Do you know what your close % is for the quotes/proposals you write?
      6. Do you know how many more leads/inquiries you need to generate the additional closed sales?
      7. How much more marketing will you need to do to generate these additional leads/inquiries?

While these are simple questions, they aren’t always easy to answer.  But, if you don’t answer them you can see where the problems will later come and keep you from achieving your goal for business growth.

These questions are at the center of tuning your revenue engine, the model that I advocate for better small business management which creates successful self-sustainable growth.  Watch our tuning your revenue engine video to better understand you can answer these 7 important questions for business growth.

At DE, Inc. we want to help those serious about growing their business this year by helping you answer these questions.  Complete the form on our Revenue Engine Performance Checkup page to get a FREE performance checkup!

Good luck in growing your business in the coming year.  Find the answers to these 7 questions and you won’t need luck!