In the sea of competition, what can you do to catch the most fish? It takes as much effort to catch a big fish as a small fish. You must fish where the big fish are. Standing out from the crowd is the key to success in growing your business. If you aren’t doing that, you risk getting lost at sea.

With a design-thinking mindset, you can beat your competitors and see your business BOOM. In the second installment in our series, we will look at how you can grow your business by thinking like a designer.

There are only three ways you can grow:

• Products and Services
• Mergers and Acquisitions
• Branching

Products and Services
New or reimagined products or services can give you the edge you need to create buzz around your business. If consumers know that you are improving or creating new offerings, it can set you apart from your competitors—resulting in attraction to your business.

But where do you start? First, look at your current consumers and their preferences. Don’t be afraid to get their opinions—it will only help tailor your approach in the long run!

• What are they buying from you that’s valuable?
• How can you make it more useful and easily accessible?
• What would prompt them to buy more?

Based on their feedback, you can more easily decide on innovative ways to improve that can help you retain and attract consumers. Just make sure you test out changes with a few existing customers to prove that your improvements are positive before diving in headfirst!

Lastly, train your team on how to tell the story around products and services. Make it fresh and part of a habit. To expect different results, you have to do something differently. Don’t fall into the definition of insanity: expecting something different without changing course or fishing in a new pond.

Mergers and Acquisitions

Another way to grow your business is through merging or acquiring another company. Merging with someone else equals more consumers for both you and the other business, and that’s a good thing! Extending your reach to combine power with another company will help target more consumers than ever before.

This can be a quick way to grow your business if you’re looking for an instant result. Combining products, services, key people, and the existing pipeline can help you target new markets while offering new options to your existing customers.

If you choose this path, there are multiple positives that can result, such as:

• Acquiring quality, trained staff
• Improving financial resources
• Growth and expansion
• Entry into a global market
• Increasing market share
• Building volume for low purchase costs
• Reducing competition
• Increasing revenue

When businesses merge together, the goal is for the whole to be greater than the individual parts. According to collated research and a recent Harvard Business Review report, the failure rate for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) sits between 70 percent and 90 percent. Choosing your partner well is key. The cultural aspect must make sense beyond the synergies of the deal. A great marriage done correctly will catapult the new organization.

Taking this leap can introduce you to a world of new consumers and growth!

Branching

New markets or optimization of branches will also help grow your business—and this is where design comes into play. Breaking into new markets with a brand-new branch, or redesigning your current branches, can capture consumers you may not have been able to grasp before. Branching opens that umbrella to cover a broader range of consumers, helping both you and them in the long run.

Do your consumers insist on doing business directly with you?Is your current location doing well? Are there proposed new locations in better areas for your target market?Do you have the funds available to expand?Are the other growth strategies viable options?How can you decide if branching is right for you? Consider this:

Don’t underestimate the value of relevancy. It is a game changer with a significant ROI. Combining a relevant, refreshed brand with a strategic placement will create a paradigm in your organization’s growth. You must always think around the corner to surpass your competition and stand out from the crowd.

If you can target at least one of these sectors and revamp your strategy, then you have started on the path to success. But to continue down that path, you need to further analyze more components.

UP NEXT…

Stay tuned for our third installment in our series, Align!