Your business may be doing great right now. As the economy rebounds, more and more small businesses are finding that revenue is picking up again after years of sub-standard sales. Over the past few years, our economy has had some challenges, but the recovery seen today poses questions for many small business owners – is your business strategy relevant to today’s marketplace?
Understand That Changes In The Business World Are Natural
When it comes to business, both your customers and your competition are constantly changing. This is because market conditions rarely stay the same for very long, and adapting to these changes becomes necessary in order for any business to become successful. Your business strategy may have been a perfect fit for what the marketplace needed when you started your organization, but as your company evolves and external conditions change, altering your business strategy is crucial to your long-term success.
Twenty years ago, newspaper companies wouldn’t believe that their printed circulation would drop significantly over the following couple of decades. Now, news companies who have not adopted the changes that came with the development of the internet are feeling the crunch from modern technology – if they’ve managed to even stay in business this long.
Identifying Which Areas Of Your Business Strategy Needs Changing
Just because market conditions have changed, it does not mean that the core of your business has to. When evaluating whether your business’ strategy is up-to-date, it is important to analyze each section separately. By identifying which areas need to be changed, you can prevent a massive alteration to your company’s operations and focus while still improving your organization’s relevancy and competitiveness in the marketplace.
One rule of thumb is to make a 10% change to your strategy each time that you need to reevaluate your plan. This 10% change allows you to update your strategy to be relevant with the times, but is still minor enough that it shouldn’t rock the core of your company. By making small changes over time, you’ll find that your business will transition more smoothly during changing markets.
Stay Ahead By Anticipating Change
The best thing that any business can do to guarantee success is correctly anticipating what will happen in the future inside of their specific industry. As with the news companies, integrating the internet into their business model was the change many organizations needed to make in order to stay relevant to customer needs. Those who were early adapters and made the change years ago found the transition much easier as consumer preference began to heavily favor digital content.
By keeping up with technology and consumer changes in your field of business, you can incorporate new developments into your company early on, rather than trying to play catch-up once your competition decides to make the same modernizations.
Many people hate change. We get comfortable in the routines and habits that we develop. For an individual, this can lead to monotony and a lack of adventure. For a business, this aversion to change can be deadly. The marketplace is always changing, and if your company is not keeping up to date with the changes, you may find that you’re left in the dust behind your competition in the minds of your consumers.
Tracey Fieber helps business owners simplify, automate, and grow their businesses and their lives. She believes in the power of hiring the right people, and helps her clients cultivate highly effective teams that allow them to focus on the work about which they're passionate. By nurturing business owners' strengths and holding them accountable for their own success, Tracey's leadership, communication, and coaching techniques help her clients take massive leaps forward.