When you are operating a successful business, you can see that the turnover is increasing, you are having to hire extra staff to handle the volume of work, you start to see profits after the initial cost of setting up the business. This is an exciting time for a business - it represents a positive outlook for the future. However, there is a difference between growing your business and being a growth-driven business. The main difference is investment.
Investing in the future of your business will ensure you stay on a growth trajectory and provide the solid foundations to ensure longevity in your business growth. So what are the investments a business can make in order to stay on a growth trajectory?
Here are our top 4 suggested investments to make in order to become a growth-driven business:
1. Invest in truly knowing and understanding your customers
Regardless of the nature of your business, getting to know your customers is essential. Market research and customer satisfaction surveys can help you understand your market and their needs. However, backing this up with a robust customer relationship management tool (CRM) is essential to keeping on top of your customer interactions. Not only will a CRM allow you to be more organised with your customer contact details, but it also means that anyone in your team can easily access the information. Also, if a member of your team leaves this information stays with the business.
2. Invest in aligning your sales and marketing efforts
Act! Growth Suite is an all-in-one CRM and marketing automation tool, which will help you align your sales and marketing efforts. Having an all in one system that is used by both sales and marketing will increase collaboration between the teams, allow teams to discuss clients interactions and learn from each other to improve the customer experience. Working from the same system enables teams to consider the sales funnel in its entirety. You can also set shared targets along the lead nurture journey and celebrate wins that feel earned by the entire team.
3. Invest in your brand and living up to your brand promise
A positive relationship between your brand and your customer is fundamental to your business success. In a world where consumers are bombarded with choice, your brand is what will make you stand out from your competitors. Creating a strong brand is about making a promise or commitment to your customers and living up to it. Investing in your brand means really defining what your brand stands for and then demonstrating that via action. Communicating your brand position both internally and externally will help you deliver a strong coherent message.
Once you have articulated your brand, a CRM will help you better understand your customers and manage the brand experience at every touchpoint and tweak where necessary to continually improve the experience.
4. Invest in systems and processes
Systems that are designed to streamline your efforts and give you visibility on your results and future. There is a clear difference between organisations who invest in systems and those that don’t. Leading businesses will not be afraid to embrace new systems. Laggards will wait until it may be too late. But it is not only investing in the systems that counts, businesses need to invest in the adoption of the new systems as well. It is one thing to purchase a new system - but the key point is to invest in the training and implementation of the system so that the system is embraced and actually used.
Investing in the right systems for your business will set you up for growth in the future. It is what we define as being growth-driven is one of the wisest business decisions you can make.
As the local supplier of Act! CRM, we have dedicated local consultants across Australia and this makes all the difference to our clients. This is one of the key driving forces in the decision to invest in Act! CRM over other CRMs in the market. We've helped thousands of businesses increase their revenue through improved customer relationships and we'd like to do the same for you. Visit our website and try a free 14-day trial of our Act! Growth Suite to see what our product can do for you. If you have any questions about the software, or about CRM in general, please contact us. Our team of experts are ready to help you.
