Is It Time To Expand Your Small Business? 

As a business owner, it’s difficult to time expansions perfectly in order to seize opportunities while wisely investing your hard-earned capital. From hiring new employees to establishing secondary locations and new product lines, it’s a risky game of not only trial and error but also a detailed process of assessing the relevant market and financial projections. Before you get into the nitty and gritty of risk assessments, you can start with some basic indicators that suggest it may be time to expand your small business.

In this blog, we’ll go over three ways of expanding your business:

• When To Hire
• When To Add A Business Location
• When To Introduce A New Product or Service

We’ll also break down the indicators for each so you can feel confident deciding how and when to grow your business. 

When to hire. 

• You notice a gap in essential skills or knowledge within your current team.

Missing skill sets are a clear indicator that you need to bring in additional help to get the job done. Depending on how frequently you’ll utilize the needed skills, you may want to onboard a new employee full or part-time. If the work is semi-regular, you can also consider hiring an independent contractor or agency for projects as they come. If your team is eager to learn and has room to bring more onto their current workload, you may also consider investing in education for your team before hiring additional employees. 

• Your team is overworked or unable to keep up with the growing demand. 

Even if your team has the skills necessary to get the job done, you may need to hire additional help if your current staff is overburdened or falling behind on their work schedule. Before hiring new employees, it’s crucial to identify specific tasks and skill sets that the new employee must have in order to bring your company the most value and ensure a worthwhile ROI.

When to add an additional business location. 

If you are a business owner considering expanding to new locations, there are certain indicators that can help determine the potential success of a new location.

• You find a gap in the supply of your market in a given area. 

An excellent opportunity to grow your business is when you realize that your services are in demand in a particular community. For instance, if you own a profitable hot yoga studio and notice that a neighboring town of the same size lacks a hot yoga studio, it would be a smart move to establish a secondary location to fill the gap in the market.

• Your location is constantly overwhelmed by incoming business and you can no longer serve all the customers in an efficient manner. 

If you’ve ever stood in line for your favorite restaurant or had to make an appointment far in advance for a popular service, then you’ve come across a business that could utilize another location. High demand is a wonderful experience for business owners to an extent, but there is a point where the long lines and wait times can actually result in people walking out the door and into the loving arms of your competitors. In these situations, another location can be used to ease the burden on your existing business while giving your customers more access.  

• People are traveling to your location just because they love your business. 

Many businesses bring in people from out of town. Sometimes by necessity, sometimes it’s just because they can’t find what you’re selling closer to home, and sometimes they travel all the way to you simply because they can’t get enough of your brand, your unique products, and your business. 

If you notice a large number of customers traveling to get to you over and over again, it’s time to do some market research and look into the logistics of a secondary location. The key here is caution and to look before you leap. 

When to introduce a new product or service. 

If you’re a successful small business owner, then you’re probably already aware of the importance of mastering the sale of specific products and services to avoid spreading your efforts, and investments, too thin and watering down the quality as a result. That being said, there comes a time when expanding your products or services is a wise innovation that can keep your business fresh and your customers happy. 

• Your customers are demanding it. 

Sometimes you know you need to add something new to the mix because your customers are constantly asking about it. Take for example the customer demand for alternative milk options in coffee shops. Just a decade ago, you were lucky if coffee shops carried soy milk for people with dairy allergies. Today, almost every coffee shop offers not only soy milk, but almond, oat, and coconut milk too. 

I’d like to say that coffee shop owners are just hyper-considerate of allergies, but the truth is that customers demanded milk variety. As business owners, the last thing we want to tell our customers is no, for fear of losing their business. If people are asking, and it’s something you can do, it may very well be worth the expansion. 

• You’re missing novelty. 

We live in the day and age of short attention spans and constant desire for stimulation and the next big thing. Keeping customers engaged, and staying competitive, often requires the careful introduction of new offers and products. Whether you improve your current offers and reintroduce them or add all-new features and products, novelty is often key to staying relevant. One industry that takes full advantage of the glitz and glam of newness is fast-food. Fast food restaurants don’t wait for their customers to get bored with the current menu; they’re always rolling out a new burger, sauce, sandwich, or special to get their customers back in the drive-thru.

For small businesses, it’s riskier to invest in new products and services. Not many of us have the capital, staff, and resources at our disposal to maintain a revolving door of interesting new products. To avoid overinvesting in a failed product line or service,  take your time and do your testing and market research. 

Is The Time Right For You? 

At the end of the day, the choice to expand is yours, and it will always involve some level of risk. We hope that this helps you to make the right decision for your business. If you are still uncertain if and how you should expand, you can schedule a consultation with our team. We’ve helped several businesses to expand strategically so that they can capture opportunities while streamlining their output. If this sounds like something you need, contact us today. 

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