Expanding Your Commercial Business

When you are running a commercial business, there will always be a million and one things to think about, but one question that will always be on your mind is, “how do I get my business to grow?”

Expanding your business is the best way to ensure its long-term survival in the current, competitive economy, so finding effective ways of achieving this expansion is vital for you to do. To give you a helping hand, this article will highlight some good ways to ensure your company is always moving in the right direction without delay, starting right now.

Securing a loan

The most obvious and effective way of expanding your business is to secure a loan that gives you the freedom to move forward and accomplish your goals.

Large sum loans are predominantly used by retailers, manufacturers, industrial companies, professional firms, health-care providers, and hospitality companies. The loans are used for capital expenses such as purchasing new equipment or hiring more staf, whichh contribute to your company’s ability to expand and grow.

More staff means you have a stronger workforce, and new equipment could mean you can produce more of your product in a shorter amount of time, meaning you can meet demand. A perk of C&I loans is their easy approval, as you will not need equity investors to get a C&I loan, which helps to save you some valuable time and means you can concentrate on increasing the cash flow within your business.

Keeping your eyes on the margins

In business, you will know that the margin is the difference between the cost you pay to acquire products and the price you then sell them for, and erosion of margin simply translates to a gradual reduction in profits over time.

It is then of vital importance that you understand how to stop margin erosion when you are trying to expand your business so that you do not find yourself in a financial choke-hold. The best way to target this potential problem is by knowing the causes of it.

One cause you need to be aware of is out of control discounting, as an overly eager sales representative can be too trigger happy when it comes to lowering the sales prices until you find that you are barely making any profit at all.

The solution to this is to find ways of keeping your sales team sticking to the target prices and reinforcing this need on a regular basis. Something as simple as random checks on staff or a quarterly review of each member of the sales department and their track record will help to keep your margins from eroding.

The future is online

Expanding your business online is not a one-stop shop anymore, as there are numerous things you can do to increase your success over time by using the world wide web.

Firstly, there is your website. You will be able to find great advice on how to build a professional website by using search engines, but there are a few basic principles you need to know about right from the start.

One of the first things that will put potential clients off looking at your website is how easy it is to navigate. If it takes them more than a few seconds to get to where they want to go, you will drastically be increasing the likelihood that they will give up and go to look on one of your competitor’s websites.

Another thing you need to know about expanding online is some information about SEO.

SEO is short for search engine optimization and is an umbrella term for a series of techniques that help your company’s website to rank higher on search engines such as Google. The benefit of a high ranking online is that it will make it much easier for new customers to find your business and, more importantly, start buying your products.

Back to school

An important factor that you need to consider when working to expand your business is that you are going to need more people to take on extra responsibilities to help you shoulder the increasing workload. This is one of the many reasons employers such as yourself need to recognize the importance of having a trained workforce.

By training up entry-level employees up, you will not only have a pool of people to help you out when things start to pick up with your business, but you will also be giving people the incentive to come and work for you by demonstrating a clear and achievable career progression is there for them.

Think about a bigger picture

One sure-fire way of getting your business growing fast is to look into how to diversify your business.

To begin with, think about how you could adapt a current product to suit a different market. For example, if a product is aimed at a low-income audience, why not try adapting the product so it is a high-end, luxury version that will appeal to a high-income clientele? Another way of diversifying your business is to consider how you are selling to people.

If you are based solely online, a good idea would be to open up a physical store in a geographical location that you know will see you getting good trade coming through, or vice-versa. A final way of being more diverse is to consider selling overseas as this will offer you up a huge, potentially untapped market for your product that will drastically increase your profit margins.

Expanding your commercial business doesn’t need to be an overly complicated process. If you take on board the advice given here and follow up on some of these methods, you will be sure to see positive results in the near future that will make your hard work all seem worth it.