Of all the aims of entrepreneurs, one of the very biggest is the aim to expand the business. It’s easy to see why; when you successfully expand a business, it shows that you are doing well, and that it is likely the business will continue to do well future as well. But it’s not enough just to know that you are keen to expand, you need to actually know the workings of such a plan. There are many kinds of expansion in business, and you can never be sure of two examples bedding alike. However, there are a number of common elements, and it is these which we will be interested in in this post. We are going to take a quick tour of some of the elements of expansion, so that you can more fully understand what is involved, what it looks like, and how to know if you have got it right or not. Without further ado, let’s take a look.
Timing
One of the most vital elements of all is timing. If you get the timing wrong, essentially the whole thing will fall apart, so you can see how important this might be, and why. Of course, get the timing right, and that does not necessarily mean you have got the whole thing right, but it does mean that you will be more likely to see the success you’re aiming for. To expand your business at the right time is to ensure that you are giving it the best possible chance of success, and that is all that you are really hoping for here. So how can you be sure whether or not you have got the timing of an expansion plan right? As it happens, it takes on board a number of different elements, many of which we are looking at later on in this post, but which we will look at briefly now as well by way of introduction.
First of all, you need to make sure that your business has been in existence long enough to warrant the expansion. What this means is essentially up to you to decide, but it is basically a way of ensuring that you are not just rushing into expansion for the sheer sake of it. As long as you feel as though you have left long enough between formation and expansion, you probably have – but maybe get a second or third opinion on the matter too. Too early, and it is unlikely you will have the necessary stability and resources to carry on with the expansion. Be sure that your business is known and that it has been around long enough first.
Secondly, you should try to determine whether the market is ready for your expansion. This is hard to figure out exactly, but one way is to make sure that you re paying attention to the markets on a regular basis anyway, so that you can be much more likely to read them correctly. If you do read them correctly, you should find that you can determine sooner whether or not the market is ready for your expansion. If you feel that it is, then by all means it could be time to go ahead with your business expansion -but do make sure that you are as certain as can be.
Thirdly, it is vital that your financial outlook matches up with the timing of the expansion as well. If it does not look likely that your money will be able to stretch far enough in the right space of time, then you should not expand until you feel that this criterion has been reached. Once it has, it is a good sign that it is time to go ahead with your expansion, as long as the above two factors are taken on board as well.
You might also discover other elements to the timing which are necessary to consider. All being well, you will be able to time it so that your business expands at just the right time, and there is much success made of it in the process. But of course, as we shall see, timing is not everything, even if it is a major part of the operation.
Types
As well as getting the timing spot on, you need to think about the type of expansion you are going to attempt as well. This might confuse some people. The fact is, there are many kinds of expansion which a business can undergo, and it is necessary to ensure that you are choosing the right one for your own business when you start to do this. The type will very much depend on your initial reason for expanding, as it is this reason which will determine what type of expansion you are seeking to carry out. However, it might be helping for the budding entrepreneur to see some examples of types of expansion which you might consider at various points along the lifeline of a business. Here are just some of the most common types of business expansion, along with a brief discussion of what each might entail.
Probably the most common is expansion of outlet. For retail businesses in particular, this will manifest as the opening of a second (or third, or fourth…) store, and it is one of the most recognisable kinds of expansion which businesses engage in every day. Getting your business to the point where you feel you can do this is no small feat, and if you do manage this, you can truly celebrate being well in business. There is plenty to consider in a case of this kind of xpansion, not least the location of the second building and allocating the management for it too. But as long as these things are taken care of swiftly, there is no reason that this kind of expansion cannot be a great boon for the business on the whole.
Another kind of expansion is more behind-the-scenes: office expansion. This is not so much an expansion in the sense that the customer or the public see it, but a functional expansion, one which affects the employees most of all. This is likely to be the result of a swiftly increasing demand for your stock or service, and as such is definitely something to be celebrated. However, there is a major common pitfall here which should be well avoided if possible. It is not uncommon for businesses seeking to expand offices to end up shooting themselves in the foot by interrupting the workflow, thereby getting to a worse position than when they started expansion. To avoid this, be sure to build a solid base, prepare your staff, and spend as little time as possible during working hours on the actual expansion and renovation. If you are expanding to a second office location too, there are certain other things to consider, not least that you then need to think about hiring the necessary equipment for construction. Finding decent mobile cranes for sale and a good construction team can be tough, but it is worth it in the long run if it means a stronger workforce and a stronger business.
Yet still another common kind of expansion might be one in which the business is seeking to go overseas. This is a particularly high-level kind of expansion, and only to be undertaken by those businesses which have been in existence for quite a long time, and which have an extremely solid base in the home territory – so solid that it shouldn’t matter if the new venture entirely fails. As you can appreciate, this requires a great deal of capital and investment in order to succeed, and it is not the kind of expansion which is taken lightly. As long as a business owner feels they are ready for it, however, it is often one of the most exciting times in the entire career of a business, and one which can prove to be particularly lucrative in the right hands as well.
There are still plenty more types of expansion, but for the sake of space we will leave it at that for now. However you are seeking to expand, you will still need to make sure that your business is ready for it. This means, as we have briefly discussed, being able to determine the potential risk of the move. As it happens, risk assessment is especially hard to get right, and is worth looking at in a little more detail before you get started with your expansion.
As you can see, expanding a business is likely to often be a long and hard task, and not one which you enter into lightly. But once you have decided that your business is ready, made your choice of what kind of expansion to undergo, and taken the plunge at the right time, you will find that your business tends to respond well to such a leap of faith. Once that leap is made, it is then simply time to stand back and allow it to happen.
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