5 growth strategies for women entrepreneurs

It is challenging to be a woman and a businessperson at the same time. This Women’s Day, Dr. Rajiv Goyal, founder of a Business Growth Coaching venture Passion2Grow, discusses how women entrepreneurs can grow their business fast and in a planned manner.

5 Practically Proven Growth Strategies

1. Business Growth Plan

It is the most effective method to take your business to new heights. Create a business growth plan for next 3 years on a monthly basis. Apart from the routine normal elements of any growth plan, it should include customer-wise growth plan and product-wise growth plan. Remember to plan for collection too without which any growth plan is useless. You should also have a budget for learning and development, as must you learn from the experts on various business growth aspects.

2. Growth Plan for Key Employees

This is where being a woman can give you an extra edge. Women have the trait of empathy, lacked by most male entrepreneurs. Create a Growth Plan for your Key Employees. You should understand that they are the main drivers of your business. It is very important to create a well-defined growth path not just for your business, but for your Key Employees, especially if you want them to put their heart and soul in your business.

3. One-day Out of Office

Skip your office 1 day in a week, or at least once a fortnight. Go to a café or to the lobby of a luxury hotel (they generally do not charge for just sitting there). Sit there with a pen and notepad and think on two dimensions – how you can improve your existing business operations; and how you can further grow your business. Write as many points as you can think, and once you are done, select only one which you think will be most effective in your opinion. Then focus on that strategy.

4. Differentiation

You can’t create a sustainable business out of ‘me-too’ products or services. Find out one aspect in which you are different from your competitors and that aspect can be highlighted to your customers. It can be related to your product or service, price, distribution channels, after-sales support or any such area which can add value to your customers. Timely Order Fulfilment can be differentiation criteria and you will be able to build a sizeable customer base by highlighting this USP.

5. Put Your Business on Auto-pilot

Business owners try to handle all business functions like sales, purchase, production, customer service, accounts and collections themselves. As a result, they devote 80 per cent of time in day-to-day operations. This is the perfect recipe for disaster. Only those businesses grow which run on auto-pilot and only 20 per cent of the time is devoted by the business owners in running day-to-day operations and 80 per cent of the time is spent on conceiving and executing the growth strategies.

More about Dr. Rajiv Goyal

He is an alum of Indian Institute of Management-Lucknow, Jack Welch Management Institute USA and Wharton online, University of Pennsylvania, USA. He is working for over 15 years in Small and Medium Enterprises and mid corporate space in India, in various roles and capacities. Dr. Rajiv Goyal conducts interactive workshops to train Business Owners to chart out a Business Growth Plan. You can write to him on info@passion2grow.in or get in touch via phone no. 8882397510