Starting a business sometimes becomes a fear for some people. No two businesses are exactly alike, and that means the journey of every business will be different. According to bizjournal.com, here are 4 stages of business growth that you need to know to prepare for every challenge that will be faced:
1. Start-up
Start-up is the initial phase of your business trip. You can launch your business concept in this phase.This is where the starting point of the struggle, where you have to go through pre-launch by collecting enough funds to prove your business concept.
It is no secret that 80% of newly built businesses fail at this stage. There are many challenges that you must face at this stage. Among other things, limited resources, poor cash flow management, product prices too high or too low, need to prepare realistic budget amounts and lack of ability to manage processes and systems.
Some of the things you need to do at the start-up stage are designing, building, testing, honing the product and making a marketing plan before entering the real market.
The main purpose of this start-up phase is to prove the business concept that you have. In addition to achieving a positive cash flow before running out of funds or losing control of the company through the next funding round.
2. Build-up
At the second stage of business growth it aims to improve cash flow, maintain profitability, build brand equity and prevent loss of customers. At this build-up stage, you have to face challenges where the amount of supply is not according to demand.
To deal with these challenges, you must collect additional resources whether in the form of labor or capital as soon as possible.
When your business the number of requests does not match with the amount of production, this will cause problems. If you don’t increase the amount of production, of course the customers will leave you. Meanwhile, to increase the amount of production, additional capital is needed. When a buyer has become a regular customer and always buys your product in large quantities, they can force you to reduce prices if the number of products requested is not met. Then in the end you will experience bankruptcy.
3. Build-out
At this stage you can expand the product marketing network. This stage will make your product more known to the public. If your product has expanded and is in great demand by the public, then it will provide evidence that your product has successfully entered many markets and can be accepted by various groups. That way, your trademark will be recognized by the public.
Some of the challenges in the build-up stage include operational inefficiencies, staff management and poor planning and execution. To overcome all these challenges, hire more workers and make sure that you have a clear picture of finances.
4. Enterprise
When you maintain an enterprise business, chances are there will be various challenges related to the increasing number of employees, more costs to spend and far less flexibility than when you just started a business.
The challenges that will emerge at this stage are maintaining employee motivation and morale, loss of momentum, decreased sales due to failure to innovate, lack of dexterity and greater operational challenges than before.
Therefore, make sure to stay focused on improving corporate culture and inspiring your employees. Identify any operational inefficiencies that can harm your profits.
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