5 Common Pitfalls To Avoid When Expanding Your Business

common pitfalls avoid expanding business

Your business is booming, you can barely keep up with the orders, this is great news, isn’t it? So the natural thing to do is to expand, surely nothing could go wrong, could it? Well if you are not careful then it could very quickly go wrong and risk everything you have worked so hard to build. But if you follow these tips then it will definitely help you avoid these problems. 

Losing Sight Of Your Core Customers 

You might be overwhelmingly busy and taking this route to expansion to get more from your business. But it's important to not neglect what got you to this stage in the first place, your regular and current customers. Make sure you don’t overlook providing the resources to keeping them happy. 

Stretching Staff Too Thinly 

One way that you can fall foul of the point we just outlined above is by stretching the staff too thinly. If you are serious about the expansion then you need to go on a recruitment drive as part of this. Make sure you can get as many experienced staff as possible in this recruitment. You need to specify the required skills in your advertising for the position and be aware that there is going to be cost in time to you and your management interviewing and deciding who to hire. No matter how good the successful candidates are they are still going to have a period getting used to the procedures and culture of your organization. 

Funding The Expansion 

So as we can see from the above points, this is not coming without a cost and the whole expansion will need to be funded from somewhere, and if there is no excess profit sitting in the bank account you will need to find it from somewhere. If you are confident that the whole thing will work then you can look to a lender such as oppbusinessloans.com to get the necessary funding. 

Running Out Of Space In The Premises 

Another thing to consider is the fact that your premises may be too small to cope with any expansion. This could be in several ways, sales space or desk space could be tight. If you keep stock or manufacture it then warehousing space or factory space may need to be increased. It might even make sense to open a second location if your customers come to you? 

Not Assessing The Profitability 

One fatal mistake that has been seen time and time again by businesses who are expanding is to see the increased cash flow and increased sales as a success. Although these things are critical to success they do not necessarily equate to success in every example. We have gone over the cost of expansion quite clearly in this article and the calculation that needs to be made is how many sales and how long it will take to recoup this investment and be in clear profit once this is all completed.

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