Food entrepreneur Greg Wixted launched home baking box business Britain Loves Baking in 2020 and saw business grow rapidly. “In just 19 months of trading, we gained over 16,000 customers in the UK,” says Wixted. “We have moved twice as we ran out of space.”
The business used one of its moves as an opportunity to streamline its processes, adding a click-and-collect window, three production lines and an automated wrapping area. “We also added a wholesale arm following an idea from someone who came to me for investment,” he says.
More than ever, finding new ways to grow is an important part of business survival. Growth helps to create new opportunities and attract new customers, and it’s also exciting to explore new avenues as a business owner. There may be early signs that you could introduce a new product line or increase stock production of a popular item.
Making a decision to grow, whatever that looks like, can be scary as there is risk involved. But once you’ve identified where you want your business to go, a business growth plan will help you take those next steps confidently. This article outlines the key steps to building a business plan for growth.
What is a business growth plan?
Put simply, a business growth plan helps you to plan and track organic growth in your revenue. It involves identifying and defining your business goals and the strategies, tactics, and timelines for meeting them. A business growth plan might focus on new client and customer opportunities, product launch plans, or expansion into new markets.
“People interpret business plans as everything from the now-obsolete big printed document to the lean business plan that’s a collection of bullet-point lists, tasks, dates, deadlines, metrics, and essential projections,” says entrepreneur and author of Lean Business Planning, Tim Berry. “People refer to them as business plans, operational plans, strategic plans or feasibility plans, but they basically mean the same thing.”
Types of business growth strategies
There are four basic types of business growth strategies:
- Development growth strategy is about identifying, acquiring, and nurturing new clients and business opportunities. It could happen at any stage of your business.
- Market strategy is how you plan to penetrate your target market and also applies at any stage of your business journey.
- Product growth strategy refers to finding new products and services that you can tailor to your current market and usually comes further along the business journey.
- Diversification strategy describes an approach to entering new markets or altering your target audience. It usually occurs once your business is established or if you need to pivot your offering.
The strategy you choose will depend on many factors, including the nature and maturity of your business, your target market(s), and how much you’re willing (or able) to spend on growth.
“It’s less capital intensive to sell more of the same stuff to existing customers than to sell existing stuff to new customers or new stuff to existing customers,” says Berry. “The hardest (and most capital intensive) is to try to sell new stuff to new customers.”
Key steps to design your business growth plan
Whatever strategy you decide on, there are some fundamental steps that you should follow.
1. Review your current situation
Planning for growth must always involve a solid review of your business’s current state of play. Start by reviewing your products/service (against your original business plans and your competitors) on measures such as affordability, popularity, availability and opportunity.
A SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities, threats) analysis can help you to further identify what areas of your business you need to bolster, as well as your key growth opportunities.
Britain Loves Baking's Wixted believes that the most important part of their growth plan was the insight work they did, talking to customers and investors and researching competitors. Research also plays a central role in their planning.
“We are going to adopt a more agile approach of test, feedback, iterate so we can manage the growth.”
2. Build the right team
You need to identify the right people to help build and execute your plan. Business owners and managers, including functional managers in charge of product, marketing, sales, finance, and operations, should contribute to – or at least be consulted on – your business growth plan. They will be central to executing the plan and meeting its success metrics. They’ll also have a clear idea of what’s currently working (or not) in their department.
If there are gaps in your team’s expertise, consider taking on short-term advisors to help build your plan, and think about whether you’ll need to make permanent hires in those areas to execute it.
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3. Map out your path to growth
Once you completely understand your current situation, you’ll have a good idea of the type of growth you’re looking to achieve.
Planning to achieve this growth means mapping out each step along the way. Concrete specifics should include major milestones, deadlines, budgets, and functional responsibilities. Don’t forget to build in review dates as you may need to course-correct along the way.
Identify all the key metrics your strategy will impact (sales revenue, profit margin, lead conversion rates, or customer retention). Explore how to track those metrics and set regular review dates. Profit margins are a good measure to start with. You should be ambitious but realistic, and remember to factor in the increased business costs that growth requires.
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Ali Mubarak is managing director of Sania Group, a franchise brand partner of Pizza Hut Delivery, which has over 500 employees, and operational locations in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, and South Wales.
Mubarak says that growth had always been a central focus for the business. Its growth plan involved calculating the number of units needed to justify an above-store leadership team to operate the business effectively and enable further growth. The plan also identified the ideal locations for units to efficiently support them.
“Our plan wasn’t just to open one unit but multiple, to allow the expansion of the business in a fast but controlled way,” Mubarak says.
“We constantly review and adapt rules, protocols, and procedures to allow the constant flow of data through our teams,” he says. “Having information such as sales and customer data flowing through departments back to the board allows us a firm grip on the controls so we can be agile in our decision making.”
Your business growth plan checklist
- Identify your growth strategy
- Review your current situation
- Build the right team
- Map out your path to growth
- Identify your key metrics and review them regularly
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