When your business was starting, you must have done a lot of business research. Business advisors must have been involved, and you might have read magazines, books, and other different sources to seek knowledge on how to build a business. Different kinds of investments like time, money, and other types of equity might have taken center stage, but what next?

For a business that has survived the start-up phase and come up with successful ventures, taking the next step might be what you are trying to figure out. There are very many ways that you can choose to grow your busiesns, and JMD Furniture would like to highlight six possible ways to go for. Let’s go through them.

Start a new branch

Expanding your business is not a common thing that most businesses do, and it is also not the best option to start with. Why is it not the best growth strategy? Because you need to conduct a thorough research on the new location and plan extensively on opening a new branch. Before you open a new location, go through the list below:

• Ensure that you maintain a consistent low margin of profitability provided that the past few years have shown a steady increase in growth.
• Look at the consumer and economic trends for indications on how your company is going.
• Ensure that your administrative management and systems are working exceptionally well because you will have to use them to run the new location.
• Write down a complete and separate business plan for your new location.
• Determine your source of financing.
• Go to a location that suits your business and not your profitability.

Patent your product

This is a low-cost, but effective way to grow your business, especially if your product or service is branded. Licensing can help you get upfront royalties and cash from the consistent sale of your product or service. This medium can help you to minimize risk. It is also cheap compared to starting a company to produce and distribute your product or brand.

Research for companies if you want to get a licensing partner. But before contacting any company, look for an attorney who is experienced with intellectual property rights to lower the risk of losing autonomy of your product or service.

Diversify

JMD Furniture would like to share several ways of diversifying your service or product line: make sales of complementary products or services, export your products or import other products, or become a paid columnist or speaker.

Diversification allows you to come up with multiple income streams to increase your profit margins and sales. JMD Furniture scholarship also advocates on getting employees who can help your company grow. That is why JMD Furniture scholarship ensures that education is paramount to equip students with opportunities to be skilled people in various fields.

Go for other markets

If your current market is serving you well, look for others. If your target market starts with teenagers to college students, think about where your audience spends its time. You can either introduce your service or product to school or colleges. You could even offer discounted services to associations or schools. Take the product to other markets that might be in need of it.

Target a government contract

If you can manage to have the government as your customer, you can quickly grow your business. To make it clear, the U.S government is the largest consumer of products and services with a consumption base of $235 billion in the year 2002 alone.

To determine the types of contract you can go for, work with your local, state, regional Economic Development Agency, or your local SBDC and SBA. There is also a business matchmaking program that is offed by the SBA and the U.S Chamber of Commerce that matches buyers and entrepreneurs.

But you must know that when you work with the government, you have to be patient because a lot of research is done for requests of proposals. If you are not able to go through the due process of complying with the RFP conditions, then you will be wasting time.

It might look like its a lot of work, but it can be worth the time. If you manage to win the bid, you will not be on the same playing field as your competitors.