5 Reasons Your SME isn’t Growing

As the owner of an SME, the chances are you are victim to this common symptom of entrepreneurialism: the inability to ever be satisfied with the success of your business. However, achieving consistent growth is something that is far easier said than done, so what could be holding you back? Read on to find out 5 reasons that your SME isn’t growing.

You don’t have an established business plan

‘Business growth’ is an undeniably vague term, but that doesn’t mean the way you operate can be just as vague. The first thing you should establish is what growth actually means to you and then work out how you can you get there. Does growing your business mean expanding your market, penetrating a new one, or making your current model more efficient? Answering these questions in the form of a well worked business plan is essential, because without it, you’re leaving your company’s future down to chance; and the business landscape is too competitive for luck to be on your side!

You’re underspending on marketing and advertising (or spending inefficiently)

Marketing is often viewed as an optional luxury to SME owners, yet you can only sell to a customer that knows you exist! In our opinion, there’s no debating that marketing is essential to growth, but only when it’s done efficiently!

Failing to see results from their first efforts at a randomly selected and short-lived marketing campaign is something that deters many SME owners from spending on marketing in future. However, just like any relationship, the one between a person and a brand takes time to develop. Instead of blindly reaching into the tombola of marketing and picking any old method, it’s crucial to take the time to understand how you can most effectively get your product and brand message in front of your target audience. Once established, you should try spreading your budget across a period of time that allows relationships with your customers to blossom, instead of hoping for results on one big spend.

You’re struggling to stay up to date.

Markets can shift at lightning speed, and despite what you may think, no industry is immune to change. Stubbornness and adversity to adaptation are surefire ways to make your SME’s growth stagnate, or worse, render your company obsolete.

Staying up to date is something that needs to be applied across the board in everything you do. Perhaps your product or service offering itself is in need of a revamp, perhaps you’re still relying on yesteryear’s sales techniques, or is it your outdated internal culture that’s scaring away useful employee prospects? In a world where consumers are spoilt for choice wherever they look, a lack of contemporaneity could be stunting your SME’s growth.

You’re frightened to try something new.

When you’ve found a formula that works for your business, why would you change anything about it it? Well, this kind of comfortable, routine-based mentality is the worst enemy of growth and development. Try asking yourself ‘what was the last step I took to improve my business?’, or ‘when was the last time our business hit a milestone?’, if you can’t think of any significant action or achievement in the past year, you’ve become too idle. That’s not to say that you should suddenly rebuild your business from the ground up to replace everything that your loyal customers have come to know and love, but a step in a new direction is key to growth.

Taking a new step is all about risk calculation. Should you sink all of your company savings into risky stock investments? Perhaps not. Might it be worth spending some of your resources on a venture into search engine optimisation? This risk-reward ratio seems a little more reasonable.

You’re not sufficiently staffed.

One of the most common mistakes an SME owner will make is thinking that they can do it all on their own, and that doing so will save them the cost of hiring. Even if you do have a small team, there is a fine line between asking your employees to take on a couple of extra tasks, and loading the work of three people onto one. Doing so will usually end up in a high turnover of staff, costing you more time, money, and resources in the long run.

Growing your team with skilled employees or simply having more hands on deck can help you to serve more customers or offer more to your existing ones, and whilst hiring isn’t always cheap, the ROI of careful hiring can be huge. If you are concerned about the hiring restrictions of your tight budget, consider part-time employees with the vision of developing them into a full-time role as they help your business grow.

If you think expanding your team is the way to help your SME grow, then here’s the good news; we’re here to help you do just that! Find out how you can grow your team for free here.