How To Plan and Promote High Growth Trajectory

It is not enough to identify the desired outcome of your business; understanding whether the current growth trajectory will lead to the desired outcome is important. Where your current trajectory does not fit in with the mission, you need to identify the steps and actions to align with the latest goal.

Planning is important and decision-making backed by action is the first step to staying focused, determined and disciplined in moving down the path of your business’s growth trajectory.

What does “growth trajectory” mean in business?

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A clear growth trajectory helps to keep you focused and disciplined enough to move in the direction of your business goals. You must also appreciate the fact that a slight shift in your growth trajectory could lead to a huge difference in the outcomes.

Growth in business, which is the scale of operation of the company, could be indicated in production capacity and output, sales and profits. More sales results in higher profit and revenue. In this context, your company’s growth generates positive cash flows faster than the overall economy, and the profits could be reinvested or paid out as dividends.

The growth patterns will depend on your growth strategy, which simply means the plan of action or tactics you employ to grow your company’s revenue and market share. In turn, this is the foundation of your dominance, stability and market expansion in your industry. This is critical to companies’ overall success and direction. No matter the adopted growth strategy, the key thing is the impact on customer acquisition and revenue. The more customers and revenue, the higher the company’s growth.

How do you plan for a realistic growth trajectory?

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Planning realistic growth trajectories is the soul of the business. The steps highlighted below offer a guide on what you should consider.

Adherence to the mission and vision statement

Your mission and vision statement must resonate with every aspect of your organization. These must reflect what you intend to accomplish and provide an aspirational look at the future. Your statements must be clear and displayed where your workforce and customers will see them often. For example, place it in the waiting room. This helps to increase awareness and remind people of the goals of your business.

Standardization and documentation

If you wish to manage and systematically enhance your organization’s work process, start with standardization and documentation. To improve the organization’s process, remove variation within the system and document key processes to facilitate consistency.

 

 

Use the updated operations handbook

Ensure that the processes and approaches to handling things are well laid out in your company handbook. The handbook should provide answers to questions on how information is entered into the office management system, the manner of payment acceptance, and daily, weekly and monthly procedures and processes. You may enlist the help of people who perform certain duties to map out the best approaches and help structure and optimize tasks on to-do list while measuring performance.

Invest in technology

Speed up processes, automate and digitize necessary steps to further your company’s growth trajectory. Poor time management can cost your company a lot in lost time and productivity.

Try an effective tool like TimeTrack’s Timesheets. With this feature, managers and employees can easily record and track attendance, working hours, absences and sick leave. A handy time-saving tool that will up everyone’s productivity.

Ensure that company and employee goals are in sync

It is difficult to achieve your business goals if everyone’s goals are mismatched. Clear, measurable and attainable goals will set the path for the right trajectory, especially if everyone’s career path matches the trajectory of your business. Setting measurable goals promotes prioritization which is one of the principles of time management. Get your team engaged through frequent discussions on their professional goals. Reward the team when they achieve excellence.

Aim for financial consistency and reliability

No business can survive without steady cash flow. Establishing consistent accounts-receivable processes and reasonable cash reserves while maintaining an annual and monthly budget is crucial to maintaining a healthy trajectory in your business. A good way to begin is to hold six months or one year of annual expenses in cash reserves.

Chasing a high growth trajectory

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A high growth trajectory represents a growth path that results in better performance than its wider market, industry or economy. This growth path generates significantly greater wealth in a short period.

Companies with a high growth path perform far better than their markets. Such companies can generate a high return on equity of greater than 15%.

Another school of thought believes that a high growth trajectory results in higher turnover by at least 20% annually for four months or more, beginning with at least $1 million. A company with a high growth trajectory could also be seen as one that upped its employee turnover from about 10 employees to about 20% per year for three consecutive years.

No matter the growth trajectory of your business and desired outcomes, there comes a time when you will face the consequences of high growth, including challenges surrounding organizational structure, company culture, globalization, hiring executives for sensitive roles and resource management.

A company with different growth trajectories will have to deal with the factors that drive growth in each growth path. These factors include but are not limited to network economies, innovation, managerial capabilities, workers’ skills and global challenges.

Improving your company’s growth trajectory

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Planning for a company’s growth trajectory demands coordination among a functional group of an organization’s stakeholders. Every stakeholder should understand their role in the business equation. To successfully plan for a growth trajectory, consider these factors.

Value proposition and business growth steps

• The need to expand and increase reach begins with targeting customers while acquiring new ones. A company that wishes to grow must design a value proposition with clear reasons that customers should pay attention to such products or services. Its growth strategies should provide opportunities for entering new markets.

Brand relevance and customer experience

• The biggest companies in the world today were once small entities. How did they come to be reckoned with? They built relevance with customers and delivered integrated and distinctive customer experiences. Building your brand should go beyond designing a logo. You must aim to be recognized for your company values and great customer experience. A strategic focus on new customer experiences is vital to build a powerful brand.

Long-term growth strategies

• Making long-term plans keeps you focused and prepares you for future eventualities. Your company must invest time and energy in designing its growth path and what that means for partners, customers and the employment of the workforce. Even if the present looks bleak, focus on creating futuristic goals and work towards realizing them.

Expand and keep expanding

• One core growth pattern you can adopt is entering new markets and customizing a segment of products and product categories. Yet, your core business must be solid before any expansion. Strategizing for the long-term will help you devise a roadmap to track progress and successes.

Grow at your pace

• It’s great to experience fast growth but too much too soon may cause business failure, especially if your managers cannot handle the fluctuations. Allow your business to grow at a pace you can cope with or in line with your capacity. Avoid overextending yourself for short-term gains. Take only the calculated risks that drive your business forward.

How to boost your growth trajectory

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Identify your defensive space

Have you identified the “white space,” opportunities in your business vertical? Once you’ve found a real and scalable business opportunity in the space, you must figure out how defensive that space is for you. This is your zone of “competitive moat,” which means your company’s ability to maintain an advantage to protect its long-term profit and market share.

Create a dynamic and diverse team

Your plan is only as good as your team’s capacity. Building a strong network of experts to lean on can make or break your business. It means the difference between stagnant and accelerated growth trajectories. To begin with, build a strong team and construct an advisory board for internal enhancement. You can have a team of advisors to advise and address technical issues in key areas of your business. This may include business expertise, industry expertise and technical expertise.

Consider leaders in and beyond your industry who can help fulfill your company’s vision. While looking at these experts, consider non-biased experts from business, academia and complementary industries to bring their credibility, knowledge and growth avenues.

Prepare an interesting story, a solid business plan and a message that will resonate. This will help to pique their interest and validate their time and resource investment.

Concentrate on strategic planning

Have you developed a business plan that defines your growth pattern? Strategic planning keeps businesses stable and empowers revenue growth.

As a leader, you should understand and lead, but must also devise strategies to let go of the day-to-day work routine and focus on growing the business.

To enable managers to take care of daily tasks, you must provide essential tools, such as TimeTrack attendance tracking software for higher productivity and efficiency which are some of the positive effects of measuring performance.

• Reflect, identify and invest in human and material resources and projects that will keep your finances stable while giving you a competitive edge within the industry.
• Gain business insights backed by data-driven decisions to review progress against your plan on at least a quarterly basis.
• Your plan must also be iterative. Prepare to make adjustments as you examine what’s working, what needs attention, what’s underperforming and the things that need a complete reboot.

Conclusion

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A business plan is one thing but you must be enthusiastic and motivated to go the extra mile in driving the growth trajectory you desire. The first right step is to consider implementing some of the strategies suggested in this article.

Driving strategic growth means taking calculated risks. Be confident in your risks and back them up with data, a solid plan, a deep understanding of the market and feedback from your team of dynamic and diverse experts. These factors will empower your success and sustained growth and development.

Take a key step to improving growth trajectory with a free test of TimeTrack’s scheduling and time management software features that will enable you to leverage technology for successful business growth.