10 Cardinal Rules for Business Growth

After over 30 years of participating in hundreds of businesses,competing in at least as many different industries, withcompanies marketing both products and services, you begin todevelop and accumulate some fundamental businesses axioms or"rules of thumb" that seem to make more sense everyday and gainmore value in business practice as your career continues toadvance and evolve.

You like to think what you have learned and the businessknowledge you have retained along your long and varied careerpath is unique, proprietary, or even "original", but somewheredeep inside you know that most of the things you hold near anddear to your own business self identity probably were alreadydeveloped, practiced, and taught way before you ever enteredyour first business conference room.

You sincerely hope that attempting to document your "CardinalRules for Business Growth" in an article of this nature willsomehow make sense to other business people, or better yet,your written contributions get added to other's own personallist of business do's and don'ts.

Ultimately a business must sustain itself with profits tocontinue its legacy. Without consistent sales revenues andreasonable expense control it eventually makes littledifference what else you may attempt do to continue to advancethe future of the enterprise. Businesses need to grow becausethose that are risking their hard earned investment in thebusiness logically expect a reasonable return on that capital.

The simple reality of business is, if there is not a reasonablereturn on money invested in a company, it makes more financialsense to put that same money in a fixed, guaranteed returnpaper investment. Never again would you have to worry that yourcompetition is about to make your entire product line obsolete!

Before we get into my list of Cardinal Rules of Business Growth,it is most appropriate to acknowledge two fundamental businessassumptions that relate to this list: 1) businesses are made upof people, working together for a common cause, existing byfocusing on solving other people's problems, namely "thecustomer" 2) No matter how "good" you think you are, howeffective your team is and how much of the targeted markets youhave cornered, there is, and always will be, another companyattempting to do what you do "better", cheaper, and moreconsistently than you ever thought. Your ultimate goal is todelay that from happening!

A "for profit" company must have a plan and a clearly definedstrategy, made up of tactics to achieve desired results. Thisarticle will focus on tactical efforts one should consider, inone form or another, to maximize the probability of continued,profitable growth.

A very successful business mentor of mine once told me, "If itis important enough to throw money at, it is important enoughto write down in black and white"? so if you have a businessplan, a business strategy and a few tactics to pull it off, besure to write them down! At least you have a fighting chance toimprove upon the matter at hand if it is written. Thoughts,concepts and ideas are difficult to improve upon otherwise!

Proven Tactics for Business Growth:

Give priority to new product or service development:Always seek ways to improve what you have to offer and developmeans to obsolete your own products or services before someoneelse does

Find new applications for existing products or services:Be sure to establish a communication means between your companyand your product / service users to determine how they reallyuse your products. Offering a financial incentive to "surface"news applications helps too!

The "easiest" sale of them all:
You have already spent the money to acquire your customers andbuild a relationships with them, why not ask what else can youmake or provide for them?

Know where to get all the answers:
ALL the answers about how your company is doing, where itshould go and what it should stop doing, reside within yourown customer base. Just ask!

"Buy" rather than "Build":
Take a good look at your targeted industry. There usually is aresourced limited company who offers viable products andservices that relate to yours. Consider buying them versusinvesting the same money in an "organic" growth alternative.

Think "out of boundaries"!
If you just focus on US markets, someday you will find yourcompany can no longer effectively compete because someone elsebeat you to the global market game board, the board thebusiness game of tomorrow will be played on

Go "E Commerce"!
Establish an effective means, via the Internet, for yourcustomers to educate and update themselves, solve their ownproblems and order your products with a few clicks of acomputer mouse

Know when to say "No" and "Stop"!
The most effective business leaders know when to say "no" andwhen to say "stop"! Making or doing something that no longermakes financial sense needs to be dealt with decisively, nomatter the, "We have always made those" , "We have always soldthose" or "We have always done it that way" commentary.

Measure and publish everything:
Business practices can only be improved upon if they arewritten, measured, tracked and periodically audited foreffectiveness. All results justify being shared with allemployees, good or bad. Always celebrate success publicly,criticize poor performance privately.

There is always a price to pay for business growth. The processis always laden with mistakes, unexpected surprises,opportunities to learn new things, always offering "anotherchance" for future growth opportunities. There is no clearroadmap on how to best grow your company, each company has itsown growth challenges.

Hopefully these "Cardinal Rules for Business Growth " stimulatedsome creative thought to make your business growth tactics thatmuch more effective. In today's global business environment thecompetitive edge we strive for gets thinner every day, growthis the price we pay to maintain that edge.

About the Author:

Mark Smock is President of http://www.business-buyer-directory.com, theFIRST international business buyer directory of its kind.business Buyer Directory provides a non-traditional means forproactive business buyers to locate businesses for saleworldwide that meet their exact registered purchase criteria.