Taking your small business to the next level is going to take a lot of hard work. You have to prepare a winning game plan that allows you to achieve growth without taking anything away from the quality of your current operations. To put your focus on development while staying on top of your day-to-day activities, you need to utilize resources smartly. Here are some of the most important things that you need to do to grow your business.

1. Expand Your Workforce Strategically

More work is probably going to take more hands on deck. Trying to add too many responsibilities to your existing workforce’s responsibilities may result in imbalanced workloads. Nevertheless, you may be reticent to add more personnel to your existing infrastructure when plans are still speculative. As you build your team, add people one or two at a time instead of taking on ten more employees at once.

Find good candidates that have the right type of experience and skill sets for the roles that you need to fill. Even if you’re still in the early phases of your development, avoid making your selections based on existing relationships with friends or colleagues. Instead, your hiring decisions should be informed wholly by your confidence in applicants’ qualifications.

2. Involve Your Staff in Your Plans

Get input from your key team members about your plans. The people who are handling the basic nuts and bolts of what’s currently working well for your business are likely to have excellent insight about the logistics of expanding your existing customer base or branching out geographically. They’ll also likely be able to bring some valuable perspective towards refining your sales process. Practical strategies and tools to improve customers’ experiences can help bring in the revenue that you’ll need in order to grow steadily.

3. Incentivize Your Team

A business owner is bound to be excited and motivated about growing a company. A workforce may not necessarily share that same enthusiasm. If employees are going to have more work but won’t reap any economic or professional benefit from development, they probably won’t be happy about it.

Involving and incentivizing your team throughout every step in expansion makes them active participants. Find ways to structure both individual and team-based incentives into reaching key milestones.

4. Build Your Business’ Credit

When you set out to increase your operating budget, you need to do a thorough assessment of your business’ current financial health. Your credit score is a good barometer of your current ability to meet outstanding obligations. Moreover, you’ll want to have a great score so that you’ll have access to the funds or lines of credit that you need to finance additional overhead costs.

In order to raise your business’ credit score, you have to make timely payments on all of your recurring bills. Accounts that are in collection could weigh your score down considerably. Even if creditors aren’t actively pursuing you, consider the possible damage that a delinquent account could be doing to your current score. Devise a plan to address negative marks on your report without hindering your ability to pay for your business’ ongoing needs.  

5. Choose Financing Options Wisely

When you’re seeking out more operating capital, you have to be very calculated about the obligations that you take on. Overextending yourself with a financing agreement can have a disastrous impact on your ability to meet your existing obligations.

First, be sure that you are choosing the right type of lending or financing option. You may do well with an additional line of credit rather than a loan for operating capital. Second, choose your collateral carefully. Lastly, review offers from multiple lenders to assure that you’re getting a competitive interest rate.

Good personnel management and detail-oriented financial oversight can make your business more successful. Expanding your operations always involves some measure of risk, but a well-executed development plan can be extremely rewarding.