A Guide to Understand and Address Business Stagnation

Achieving sustainable and consistent business growth is one of the fundamental goals of any organization. However, when it comes to business growth, most entrepreneurs think of sales/revenue growth or market expansion. Expansion can create many exciting opportunities for your company and unique employee experiences. However, it also brings obstacles along the path to long-term success.

Leaders sometimes remain under the illusion of what has gotten them till here is the same thing that will lead them to success in the future. However, such a mindset and approach can lead to incremental planning and operations in reactive mode, resulting in business stagnation.

Maintaining efficiency in a complex environment, managing uncertainty, or meeting the needs of a diverse workforce and an evolved audience are some roadblocks businesses can encounter as they grow.

To achieve a consistently higher rate of growth and thrive in the digital, disruptive world, entrepreneurs must be able to adopt growth and digital mindset.

The following three aspects can help you overcome current challenges and create a foundation for growth acceleration to future-proof your business.

1. Imbibe Strategic Thinking 

A lack of strategic thinking results in owners and leaders not focusing on long-term ideas and innovations. Strategic initiatives can channel a holistic 360-degree growth for the company – development of all business functions, working in harmony to generate sustainable value.

Although tactical thinking and short-term strategies can address immediate problems, the outcomes are short-lived. In many cases, it creates a vicious cycle that pulls entrepreneurs into a constant firefighting mode. Since they are too busy running the operations and solving daily problems, they don’t find time to focus on growth, profitability, and improved customer experiences.

The three components of strategic thinking include innovation, strategic planning, and operational planning. By leveraging the power of strategic and innovative thinking, leaders can accelerate business growth in various ways.

The Amazon Effect

Amazon has created a paradigm shift in the shopping process. Along with offering products at competitive prices, it also transformed how people perceived online buying. For example, Sunday delivery and drone drop-offs gave customers an enhanced positive experience for online shopping.

With Amazon Prime subscriptions, they made shipping costs moot and encouraged many more customers to shop online since there were no additional costs involved. Today, Amazon is a leader in e-commerce because it has invested thoroughly in innovating the customer experience.

2. Adapt for Change and Transformation

The business world is evolving at a phenomenal rate. As innovations and disruptive technologies penetrate every organization, business adopting traditional practices experience stagnated business growth. Entrepreneurs must rapidly adapt to the changing times and identify areas and solutions for improvement throughout the customer journey. This can include embracing digital technologies for better marketing or sales, increasing efficiencies and productivity through automation, or ensuring efficient procurement or supply chain management. An even more advanced approach will include:

• Increasing resource allocations to adopt new business models.
• Identifying new revenue streams
• Discovering fast-growing categories, segments, and markets along with new channels for growth.

The Netflix Magic 

Adapt or die is the new mantra for businesses that have transformed their models to survive and thrive in a cutting-edge competitive environment. For instance, Netflix was founded in 1997 as a DVD rental company. Today, it has over 109 million worldwide subscribers, enjoying video on demand. In 2001, CEO Reed Hastings had the vision to stream movies over the internet directly to screens at home. After ten years of experimenting, he got customers invested in the idea of streaming instead of playing physical DVDs.

Netflix mastered the art of the disruptive innovator along with its original blockbusters. As a result, it’s changed how we consume entertainment and cut the cord on TV networks.

That’s the power of change and transformation.

3. Improve Market Positioning

After building a sound strategy and working intensely on changing your product offering to achieve customer satisfaction, it’s no use if you can’t create buyer awareness. Out of sight is out of mind – this applies to all companies, whether market leaders or challenger businesses. 

Thus, every leader needs to enhance marketing techniques, messaging, and communication continuously. With clarity on your target audience, a well-defined marketing channel strategy and an effective content strategy with the prudent budget allocation can assist businesses create a buzz in the market to attract more prospects and grow business by increasing conversions.

The Starbucks Stimuli 

Starbucks positioned itself primarily on delivering an exceptional customer experience. Their customized drinks, warm employee smiles, and comforting environment brought more and more customers to the cafes. However, writing the name of the client on the glass before serving the drink became an integral part of the culture that improved their market positioning. Customers loved the personalization, and the brand enjoyed millions of social media postings. As a result, it conveyed the simple message that buying a coffee at Starbucks can be a pleasant experience. Now, Starbucks also allows customers to buy through the mobile app, thus optimizing customers’ time, reducing lines, and offering an opportunity to choose coffee calmly, thus reinforcing the brand positioning.

Business isn’t a game of ‘here and now’ anymore. Instead, it requires new-age leaders to focus on short, mid, and long-term to achieve a consistently higher growth rate, stay relevant with customer expectations and constantly strive to create a new competitive advantage. Businesses developed out of passion for a new technology or an idea experience growth stagnation when specific skills are required. In such cases, it’s advantageous to collaborate with experts who’s helped other businesses chalk out successful growth plans.

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