Growing your small business can be a difficult and frustrating process. No matter how talented, experienced, or proficient you are as a leader, business development may not be one of your core skills.

So, how do you develop the business leadership skills necessary to grow your business and achieve the success you envisioned when you started the business? You need a growth strategy. Here are a few ideas:

• Leveraging. Every leader should look for ways to leverage everything they do in multiple ways. If you have a satisfied customer, they are one of your best resources for new business. Simply ask them “who else do you think would benefit by using our product?”
• Relationship-building. Relationships are key to growth. Build high-trust, high-integrity relationships with everyone you do business with – clients, vendors, bankers, colleagues, alliances, etc.
• Clarity. A key business leadership skill is clarity. Clarify what your company truly is and what you want to accomplish. Clarify job functions, performance metrics, ethics and more. Defining these and a multitude of other factors that will impact performance and growth.
• Infrastructure. Many small business leaders overlook this critically important aspect of doing business. They manage by the checkbook method, thinking, “if there is money on the checkbook, I must be doing ok.” But if you don’t plan your growth, and measure against your goals, how will you know where you are headed? Your infrastructure must include goals, budgets and planning at a minimum. Measure everything that you can so you can notice improvements as your small business grows. To help, hire the best people you can afford in key measurement areas such as accounting, finance, sales leadership, manufacturing and all front line personnel
• Business Development. Everyone is responsible for business development. Everyone is a salesperson… regardless of their job title. If you know the challenges that keep your clients up at night, all that remains is to provide your clients with solutions that will work for them. That is, after all, what a growth strategy is. Identify the problem; provide the solution that will meet or exceed your client’s expectations and your business will grow.

Ask for expert advice

As a small business owner, you have vast resources available to you to assist in developing and growing your business:

The Small Business Administration (SBA) website has a section that provides proven Strategies for Growth. They also have a vast library of resources for you as a small business owner to learn from and utilize. Let them help you.

You small business lender is also a great resource for you as you develop and grow your small business. They have probably seen it all and can give you great ideas on how to expand and grow with the right financing products for your business.

Always keep in mind your small business lender has a vested interest in your success. There is no need to fear the client/lender relationship as they can be of great help to you and an ally in you realizing your dream.

To your success.

This article was written by Praxis Strategy Group and  originally appeared in Small Business Connect, an online resource for small business from Alerus Financial.  For more information, go to Alerus Small Business Connect.

Praxis Strategy Group is a partner with the Flint Group