When you’re a service-based business owner, your clients are buying your skills or expertise. This could mean you’re a solo consultant or it could mean you’re a marketing agency, a financial services firm, or even a plumbing repair company, within this article we take a look at Business Growth Strategies and how they can be applied to your business.
As a service business owner, you obviously want to make sure your business is continuously growing. However, as you probably know, scaling a service business can sometimes be trickier than product-based businesses.
Selling a service involves a lot more than the simpler transaction of selling a product. After you generate leads, you need to nurture them and build relationships with your customers over time. While necessary, all of this can be time-consuming and labor-intensive too.
So what’s our best advice for fueling business growth in the services field you ask? We have five tips for you.
5 Business Growth Strategies to Grow Your Service-Based Business
In a service-based business, it’s so easy to get trapped in a cycle of completing a project, then spending significant time finding, engaging, and onboarding a new client, only for it all to replay over and over again
Before we dive in, we’d like to draw your attention to something. The strategies we recommend below are designed to help you get out of this cycle. We encourage you to take a step back and take a good hard look at your business. You may find you need to make changes to key business processes or rethink existing offerings.
While these changes may feel difficult or overwhelming at the beginning, don’t resist them. Remember your “why” behind implementing these strategies – growth. Scaling and growing a service business doesn’t happen overnight. Take it one step at a time, be patient and we’re confident you will find these strategies very helpful.
Let’s discuss five key strategies to help fuel growth for your service-based business.
1. Be clear on your core offering
Are you clear on what your main, core service offering to your clients is? Even if you have been in business for a while, this may not always be clear—to you or your customers. This is a good time to
Many service providers offer too many service options and it becomes difficult to become known for any one particular skill or service. To truly grow your service-based business, you must first identify your core offering and the customers who will purchase from you.
Take a look at the services you offer and ask yourself what problem you’re solving for your clients. You probably solve a few so zero in on the most difficult problem or the area you have the most experience in. This should become your core offering as this is where you provide most value to your customers.
You want to become the go-to person in your industry. This is one of the best ways to start growing your business as when people search for an expert, there is no question in their mind who they go to for help—you!
2. Hire the right people
In a service-based business, your people are your product. So it’s important to hire and build a team of people who will impress your clients and keep them happy.
The first step towards delivering exceptional service to your clients starts at getting the right people on-board.
Sometimes the people with the right qualifications, experience and skill set do not have the right attitude and mindset to blend in with your team and match your business goals. For every role within your organization, hire people who are not only skilled at what they do, but also possess key soft skills such as good communication, and organization.
If you’re unable to find qualified staff locally, don’t be afraid to go online and consider building a remote team.
Remember, people buy from people they like. A service business thrives on good customer service so make sure your team members are people who can deliver on a good customer experience.
3. Get your systems and processes in place
When you first start a service business, it may be just you or you and a business partner managing everything from sales to service to customer support. However, this will start to change as your business grows and you hire new people.
Before you start scaling your business, make sure you have good systems and processes in place. Without the right systems, growth could result in poor quality service and the last thing you want is dissatisfied new clients.
You will need to put in place a standard operating procedure and process that you use for the fulfillment of your services. Document your entire process so new and old staff deliver the same service and you guarantee quality every time.
A tool like Mission Control can help you keep everything organized within your service business. From resource planning and utilization to project planning and organization, from managing billing and invoices to consolidating all business functions under one hub—Mission Control can help you create and maintain effective systems for your business.
As you grow you may start onboarding lots of new clients. Without proper systems in place, you’re setting yourself up for angry clients, bad reviews and, ultimately, loss of revenue. Avoid this by systematizing your processes so you can guarantee your customers the same quality of experience every time.
4. Build authentic relationships
According to Salesforce, it takes six to eight touches to qualify a marketing lead. “These touch points are opportunities to prepare leads for the final stage in the buying journey, the point of decision-making. The better the experience and the more valuable each of these touch points are to leads, the more ready they’ll be to make a buying decision, and the more likely they are to convert to paying customers.”
Relationship building and good service are key for service-based businesses. Don’t get so caught up in winning clients that you forget to serve them well.
From sales to marketing to customer service, make sure you’re creating connections and providing good service to your customers. Listen carefully to the needs of your client, evaluate if you are the best fit to meet these needs then communicate clearly with them on the outcomes you will provide. Clear communication is the key to good partnerships and relationships.
Build relationships with your existing clients to they refer you to others. Ultimately, People buy from those they know, like and trust. But becoming that person takes time so nurture your relationships by delivering authentic experiences. Give and expect nothing in return.
5. Invest in the right technology
The right technology can help service-based businesses accelerate growth and propel them forward. This could mean investing in project management tools that help you stay organized and manage all areas of your business with ease.
This could also mean investing in other technology such as apps or even a better website to offer your clients with a better experience and offer more opportunities to scale your business.
Scale Up with Mission Control
As you can see, there are lots of moving parts to scale a business. You may want to employ one, some, or all of these strategies. While that’s great, it also necessitates being extremely organized and taking a very tactical approach to ensure your growth project achieves the desired results.
Mission Control can help you get (and stay!) organized while also ensuring you’re making progress on the various tasks involved.
See how Mission Control can help you scale up your service-based business. Request a demo today.
