All businesses regardless of size should all have a business strategy in place. As a business, you will have a list of objectives or goals that you want to achieve by certain points in time, and you’re going to find it increasingly difficult to achieve these objectives at all, let alone within the specified timescales, if you don’t have a business strategy put together.
When it comes to a business strategy, the common practice is to have one that covers the next 5 years of business. And when it comes to the strategy itself you can either have a general strategy which could be for the businesses to be making a certain amount of turnover or alternatively you could be putting together a competitive strategy which focuses on gaining market share and preparing the business for upcoming and future developments within the industry.
Competitive edge for your business
If you’re putting together a competitive business strategy your business will want to be looking at the pricing for your products or services as well as being able to set yourself apart from any competitors. Of course, you could always end up facing challenges from competing businesses without a business plan however this would leave you with minimal time to prepare a response sometimes being the difference between the survival and demise of a business.
Small businesses more than ever need to ensure that they have a business strategy in place. Despite you only being a small business, this can sometimes mean that you have a lot of competitors or that the industry you’re heading in to is heavily saturated. This means that before you’ve even entered the market you could find your business being forced out due to not having any competitive strategy in place to pose a threat to competition.
Focus your activities
Another benefit of having a strategy in place as a small business owner is it keeps your focus homed into activities core to your business’s success. Without this, sometimes you can tend to get distracted, wander off the path and worse than all, procrastinate. This procrastination can cost your business dearly when it comes to both time and money. As part of your strategy as a small business you’re also going to want to put a marketing plan together and at the forefront of this strategy to try and attract new customers as well as retaining existing customers.
Ideally, you’ll want to have your strategy fully completed and ready to go before you even start up your small business however if you’re already running a small business and you have no strategy in place it’s not too late to put one together and put it into action to hopefully reap the rewards.
