Want to improve the odds that your small business goes big? Don’t feel you have to go it alone. Small Business Development Center (SBDC) consultants and advisors provide free consulting to help small business owners start or expand their businesses.
This month, America’s SBDC—which is comprised of some 1,000 centers nationwide— celebrates forty years of helping small businesses grow, and the results are impressive.
Last year, SBDCs helped small business owners:
- Create 99,194 new jobs
- Generate $7 billion in sales
- Create a new business every 32 minutes
As a result of their work with thousands of small business owners, they have unique insights into what it takes to succeed. Here, 13 SBDC pros share strategies for helping your small business think—and grow—big.
1. Don’t try to give birth to an adult
You don’t expect a baby to perform or respond as a college graduate. Just like rearing a child, businesses are born, reared, evolve, and mature. You don’t start the business and expect mega success overnight. That path usually leads to disaster or collapse. What we think the experience and effort is going to be when we start—and what it actually is—are worlds apart.
We start the business and end up making it up as we go along, learning and adjusting, and just when we think we have it down (or mastered the age group) the game changes and we have to adapt and learn and lead again. We lead but we learn, too. The business, the customers, the market, all teach us what we need to know. Business owners who stay very present, patient, observant, and nurturing, taking the slow path and keeping careful pace with the business (their baby) as it matures through stages, like us, ultimately reduce the level of their risks and grow the business more securely to big over time.
—Lorraine Allen, consultant and former Regional Director, Small Business Development Center at The College of New Jersey
2. Get connected
Network with anyone and everyone in your region and industry. Establish solid connections and maintain those relationships. Choose 20 to 30 individuals or companies that are large enough to offer you something relative to your work and maintain contact with these folks. At least monthly, shoot them an email checking in, wishing them happy holidays, or asking them to grab coffee with you. When the time comes that you need to ask for something, you’ll be comfortable doing so, and they’ll be more likely to say yes.
Leave a good impression (and a business card) with just about anyone you come into contact with. You never know whose hand you’re going to shake that could open a major door for you in the future.
—Alison Lane, Business Advisor, Maine Small Business Development Center
3. Think like a franchisor
Successful franchises have very specific systems in place so that the model is easily duplicated when new branches open. If a small business starts thinking about these systems from the early business planning stage, it becomes a part of their business model and gives them a competitive advantage. Create systems or procedures for everything inside the business (inventory ordering/management, bookkeeping, human resources management, culture, etc.) and everything outside the business (customer relations, marketing, branding, atmosphere, culture, etc.). Even if a company does not want to franchise, these systems will put a small company in a position to grow.
—Sue Pitts, Regional Director, Iowa Western Community College SBDC
4. Aim for these three essentials
I have been a consultant for 19 years and have seen businesses fail and succeed for many reasons. Long-time successful businesses seem to embody personal characteristics I call the “DOC” theory. They have these three personal skills: discipline, organization, and communication. They are disciplined in getting work done on time and carrying out goals; they are organized enough to know where everything is and manage their time well; and they have the ability to communicate well with others. These are the backbone of interpersonal skills that lay the groundwork for a product or service that is needed.
—Curt Walczak, Business Consultant Northeast Minnesota SBDC
5. Take a phased approach
Clients who take a phased approach to growing their business are typically more successful. In a phased approach, the client will start small and then grow the business in phases and not all at once. Using this method, clients test the market and make adjustments to their product or service while they are still small. By the time the business has scaled up, it has honed its product or service to meet the market needs. The phased approach also allows them to begin realizing revenue that can then be used to support the next phase of growth.
—Shannon Byers, Center Director/Business Advisor, Maine SBDC at Coastal Enterprises, Inc.
6. Create your growth team
Successful business owners are proactive and intentional when it comes to their growth. They plan in advance and use their team of resources—their SBDC, their CPA, and their banker—strategically. They make sure that “the team” is on-board with the anticipated growth. With checkpoints in place, the growth is monitored and controlled. “Runaway” growth can be just as dangerous as no growth at all.
—CJ Johnson, Capital Development Advisor, Arizona SBDC