Growth Business Plan: What it is and How to write one

Growth business plan outlines where a business sees itself in the next one to two years. It entails steps and strategies that a business will gradually undertake  to accomplish its targets. Types of business growth strategies include revenue, customer, marketing as well as product growth strategy. All types of businesses require growth plans. Business leaders create plans for expansion and revenue growth. A business growth plan has elements such as well defined expansion activities, clear breakdown of financial goals and a comprehensive marketing plan.

The first step of writing a growth business plan is to evaluate your business to know where you are starting from. The final step is to implement your growth plan. The advantages of a growth business plan are that it protects your business from economic disruptions and ensures customer satisfaction. You can buy a growth business plan from a business plan expert. A growth business plan is also known as a business growth plan. 

What is a business growth plan?

A business growth plan is a one to two year master plan that describes your business’ growth goals, method you will use to achieve the goals and how you will measure success. It is a systematic record of your future ambitions for your business. Business growth is the process of expanding business operations. To be successful as an entrepreneur, you must plan for growth.

Deciding not to grow is a pathway to failure. Growth could mean expanding your business to different locations, growing your client base or diversifying your products and services. Business growth plans focus more on increasing revenue. At the end of each quarter, your business can review the goals that have been achieved and those missed. A business growth plan helps you identify new growth opportunities for your business.

What are the elements of a growth business plan?

Elements of a growth business plan refer to the characteristics that a growth business plan should have. These elements make a successful business growth plan. Elements of a growth business plan include:

1. Well defined expansion opportunities:

Expansion opportunities could be geographic expansion, new products, going global or a new segment of customers. They should be clear, measurable and have a timeline.

2. Clear  breakdown of financial quarterly and annual goals:

Financial quarterly goals are set for a timeframe of three months and include increasing revenue, reducing expenses or increasing net profits. Breaking down financial goals makes them more achievable and realistic. It fosters a culture of continuous improvement because at the end of each quarter, your team can assess the progress the business has made and make the needed adjustments.

3. A comprehensive marketing plan explaining how you will achieve growth:

Growing your business requires immense marketing effort. A marketing plan outlines how you will effectively market your business to enhance growth.

4. Breakdown of your company’s staffing needs and responsibilities:

This is done by assessing your skills as the owner as well as those of your employees. Your staffing requirements should meet the growth objectives of your business. You should determine how much growth can be accomplished with your current team of employees.

5. Financial plan that outlines what capital is available during growth:

Business expansion comes with additional costs such as buying new equipment. A financial plan will include detailed information on how expansions will be funded.

6. Technology needed for business growth:

Technology such as software applications plays a key role in the business world today and hence an integral component of business growth. Your business should have already established technology infrastructure to help in accelerating business processes and operations. 

How to write a business growth plan 

Writing a business growth plan is a step by step process that requires progressive thinking and research. Before you start writing, you can review other business growth plan models from successful businesses. With the future being unpredictable, you can also study your competition, target market as well as your business’ past growth to plan for expansion. Ask for advice from successful business owners who have enjoyed growth. Their advice is the ideal tool for writing your business growth plan. Prioritize the most urgent tasks that require immediate action versus those that will wait for later and allocate deadlines for completion of the  tasks. The following are steps of writing a business growth plan.

Analyze Your Business

Analyzing your business entails gathering information about its finances, operations, customers as well as its products and services. It includes reviewing your financial statements such as income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement. Look at your inventory and sales report as well as reviews from customers. Evaluate the strengths of your business, accomplishments and areas of weaknesses. It is hard to grow your business if you dont know its present state. Taking time to understand what works and what doesn’t is a good starting point for  creating a growth plan.

Discover Growth Opportunity in Your Business

Discovering growth opportunities in your business entails determining where your expansion opportunities lie. Determine if they lie in creating new products, opening new business locations, targeting a new market or adding more services. Always start with the most accessible opportunity that will increase revenue quickly. You can then use the extra income earned to fund the next growth activities. Look for the highest growth opportunities within your growth strategy. For example, for internal growth, you should review your current business operations to identify areas of improvement while for external growth, research potential markets for your products and services. Your growth business plan should also sharpen specific growth areas such as growth of customer acquisition rates to ensure focus on growth initiatives.

Evaluate the Team 

Evaluating your team entails an assessment of your employees and looking at your staffing requirements to meet your objectives for growth. You first assess your skills as the business owner and then those of your team of employees so as to determine how much growth can be achieved with your current team. By doing an evaluation, you will know when to start a hiring process for new staff as well as what to look for in the new hires. Hire people who are motivated by your plans for growth because your staff have direct and indirect contact with your customers. Their positive energy will inspire your customers to buy more from you. In addition, a motivated team of staff will get feedback from your customers that will bring ideas to help grow your business.

Find the Required Capital

Finding the required capital entails finding funds to finance your expansion activities.Capital refers to the money that is available in a business to fund its day to day operations as well as to finance its future plans for expansion. Your business growth plan should include detailed information on how you will fund expansion. Growth often comes with additional costs such as purchase of new equipment or technology infrastructure hence you must identify how to raise the required capital. You will need a budget allocation or a capital investment to see the growth project through. If necessary, prepare a funding request for presentation to lenders for loan funding. 

Define your Marketing Strategies

It requires marketing effort to grow your business. Marketing strategies outline how you will market your business effectively to encourage growth. Marketing strategies entail how you plan to penetrate your target market and leverage your current products and services. Examples of marketing strategies include price adjustment, marketing campaigns and email marketing. The focus of marketing strategies is not only on customer acquisition but also on retention and long term engagement. Business growth marketing is crucial in adapting quickly to market shifts as well as driving consistent revenue.

Ask for help from a business plan writer

A business plan writer is a consultant who specializes in creating business plans by working with business owners. Engaging a business plan writer to help in your growth business plan ensures that your growth business plan meets industry standards. A business plan writer has a wealth of experience and expertise in business planning.  Business plan writers have worked with successful business owners hence will give you advice on successful business growth. In addition, the knowledge of a business plan writer allows them to highlight unique selling propositions as well as showcase growth opportunities for your business.

Implement your Plan

Implementing your plan is taking action after outlining the plan. After goal setting and allocating resources, you are now ready to execute your business growth plan. During implementation, ensure that you hold into account every stakeholder and  keep communication channels open. Compare preliminary results to the forecasted goals to see if your growth goals are still achievable and make adjustments where necessary.  It is at this stage that you implement different growth strategies such as revenue, customer, marketing, product and development growth strategies. Assign specific tasks to your team members and take time each month or quarter to review progress. If the strategies applied are not working, change tact because growth takes patience and experimentation.

Why You Need a Business Growth Plan 

There are many reasons as to why a business growth plan is important to have as a business. Business growth is essential to long term survival of a business and hence inevitable. Business growth plan is important because it helps businesses in:

1. Remaining on top of trends:

The process of creating a business growth plan entails market research where you are able to identify trends in the market, and develop strategies to leverage them. This helps you stay ahead of competition and be relevant in a dynamic market.

2. Ensuring customer satisfaction:

A business growth plan helps you respond to market demand hence build customer trust in your business brand. Meeting the needs of customers leads to customer satisfaction.

3. Getting new customers:

As part of a business growth plan, a marketing plan helps you seize opportunities for increasing your customers’ base. A business growth plan details the marketing channels you will use to advertise your business and hence gain new customers.

4. Competing with other businesses:

A growth plan helps you identify new trends in the market so that you develop strategies to take advantage of the opportunities. This ensures that your business stays ahead of its competition.

5. Maintaining better cash flow:

A business growth plan aims at increasing revenue for your business. More revenue means more cash inflow into the business and hence a better cash flow for operational efficiency.

6. Increasing profits:

Growth is the process of expanding operations for the purpose of increasing profits. A business growth plan then becomes a roadmap towards achieving the profitability objective.

7. Meeting long-term goals:

A business growth plan describes your long term goals. Within it, you outline the method you will use to meet your goals.

8. Reducing your financial losses:

Having a growth plan ensures financial cushioning to your business when unexpected adverse events happen. A growth plan helps you anticipate and plan for obstacles hence reducing your financial losses.

9. Protecting your business from economic disruptions:

A business growth plan helps you mitigate economic disruptions through diversification of your investment portfolio. Diversification helps spread economic risks such as market volatility which could lead to a decrease in the value of your investment. 

What are the types of Business Growth Strategies

A business growth strategy is a comprehensive plan that a business makes to expand specific aspects of the entity such as revenue, customers and products. It is an approach implemented by a business to achieve significant expansion. The main goal of a growth strategy is to increase revenue, enhance the business’ market share and increase profitability over time. Your particular industry or target market will influence the growth strategy that you will use. A business goal strategy is necessary as it encourages long term thinking compelling you to plan for the future success of the business. There are countless business growth strategies but we’ll focus on the following.

Revenue Growth Strategy

Revenue growth strategy is a plan by a business to increase revenue over a period of time such as annually. Businesses that pursue revenue growth strategies monitor cash flows, create sales forecasting reports and analyze present market trends to improve sales. Additionally, they make partnerships with other businesses to grow revenue. A revenue growth strategy focuses on identifying new income streams and capitalizing on new growth opportunities within an entity’s customer base.

Revenue growth tactics include investing in sales training programs, using technology to make sales forecasting reports, continuous training of customer service officers for customer retention as well as using low cost marketing strategies to save on customer acquisition costs.Many businesses implement revenue growth strategies to achieve long term success. 

Customer Growth Strategy

Customer growth strategy is a plan by a business to boost new customer acquisition in a certain timeframe such as a month. Customer growth entails strategically expanding the customer base by offering value and understanding customer needs to ensure sustainable growth of revenue for your business.

Businesses pursuing a customer growth strategy are open to making investments that lead to customer acquisition. For a customer growth strategy, you leverage pricing as a strategy to attract more customers. Customer growth tactics include increasing advertising and marketing or adding new products and services. 

Marketing Growth Strategy

A marketing growth strategy is a plan on how you will penetrate your target market to boost market share. The goal of a marketing growth strategy is to get new customers and retain them in the long run. To set a marketing growth strategy, a business must first evaluate its portfolio. During this portfolio analysis, a business decides which products to keep and which ones they should stop investing in. Businesses can use marketing planning tools to help them assess market opportunities.

There are various types of marketing growth strategy key among them market penetration, market development, product development as well as diversification. Market penetration is used by businesses to increase market share of their existing products in existing markets. Market development strategy  is used by a business to find new markets for an existing product while the product development strategy is pursued when a business develops new products to sell in existing markets. Businesses consider diversification strategies when developing new products to enter new markets.

Product Growth Strategy

Product growth strategy is an entity’s plan to increase usage of its product or expand its lines of product. This strategy requires a huge investment into the business’ product engineering team. In the retail industry, product growth strategy entails partnering with manufacturers to expand product catalog. Specific product growth tactics include adding new features to existing products as well as broadening the product user base. 

Your  product growth strategy should be aligned with the marketing strategies of the business. This ensures that both strategies work together towards common objectives. Establish metrics that you will use to track your product’s key performance indicators to enable you gauge success and keep your team focused.

Sales Growth strategy

A sales growth strategy is a plan which focuses on building good customer relationships and creating systems to support sales efforts. It should be supported by clear objectives as well as in depth understanding of your customers and market. Ensure that you have the right resources to manage sales performance.

Sales growth is a metric that measures period sales changes in a business on a monthly, quarterly and yearly basis. Businesses can use various sales growth strategies in today’s highly competitive market which include strategic partnership with clients to foster recurring business, lowering prices as well as sales training and development. 

External Growth Strategy

External growth strategy is about increasing business output with the help of resources that are not internally developed by the business itself. These resources are obtained through mergers, acquisitions or partnerships with other entities. External growth strategies are also known as inorganic growth strategies and are fast ways to grow. They result in an increase in a business’ market share, expanding into new markets and diversifying products and services. Examples of external growth strategies include franchising, joint ventures, strategic alliances and foreign collaborations. Although external growth strategies provide many benefits they carry risks as well. For example, mergers and acquisitions cause culture clashes and other challenges of integration.

Internal Growth Strategy

Internal growth strategy is a method by which a business expands its operations and achieves growth internally without relying on external methods. It seeks to optimize internal business processes and relies on internal resources of a business. An internal growth strategy focuses on leveraging the resources, existing market presence and abilities of a business. These growth strategies are created by assessing a business’ core competencies. Internal growth strategies include innovation, customer experience and retention and human capital development. Internal growth strategies improve an entity’s knowledge as well as promoting culture management.  

Brand Growth Strategy

A brand growth strategy is a documented idea that makes your brand grow rapidly. It builds on the unique trait that sets your brand apart as compared to your competitors. A brand growth strategy is a plan of how your business should be perceived by customers or competitors. Brand strategy is a long term plan that results in the identification and preference of your business brand by customers. It encloses the mission of your brand, promises to your customers as well as how the promises are communicated. The main goal of a successful brand strategy is to let the universe know that your brand exists, the brand purpose and what defines the brand. Your brand is how your business is presented to the world. A strong brand is crucial to any business wanting to build strong networks with customers. An effective brand strategy promotes brand recognition in the market.

Why is a growth plan important to include in a business plan

It is important to include a growth plan in a business plan because  planning for growth at the beginning of a business is crucial for business success. It guides goal achievement as well as effectively managing risk. Outlining growth strategies early for a business positions it for long term success and sustainability. A business plan is a document that outlines the goals of a business and the strategies to achieve them. Established businesses use a business plan to stay aligned with their growth objectives. On the other hand, a growth plan outlines the plans that a business has for the future. 

What is the importance of a business plan?

The main importance of a business plan is to help you set goals and outline how you are going to achieve them. It is also important for attracting investors to your business as it convinces them of the viability of your business idea. A business plan helps you set objectives and communicate them for proper planning. Additionally, your business plan is important since it helps to secure funding for your business from lenders. 

How do you write a business plan?

Writing a business plan is a step by step process that entails drafting an executive summary which is a summary of the entire business plan. You then write a company description which describes who you are and what you plan to do. The other step is to outline your products and services as well as the management structure of your business entity. Conduct a marketing analysis and come up with a marketing plan and financial plan. When writing a business plan, you should be brief, be realistic, keep your audience in mind and cover the correct details.

What is the cost of a business plan?

A business plan costs between $ 2000 and $ 25000. The cost depends on the quality required, length, and complexity of your business plan. Other factors that impact the cost of a business plan are the level of expertise of the business plan writer, size of the business as well as turnaround time. Longer business plans will cost more than shorter ones while a business plan for a large company is expensive to write because of its complexity. Shorter turnaround time means that you will have to pay higher cost for the business plan. Highly skilled business plan experts will charge a higher price than less skilled writers.

Can you buy a business growth plan? 

Yes, you can buy a business growth plan from a business plan expert. A business plan expert has the knowledge, experience and expertise to create a standard growth plan. You could find business plan experts online or through referrals. Ensure that you check their reviews before engaging them so that you are able to determine the quality of their work. Companies online such as Upliplans offer professional business plan writing services. 

Is a business growth plan similar to a strategic business plan?

No, a business growth plan and a strategic business plan are two different plans.However, they share the same concept of business planning. Both types of business plans focus on future goals of the business. A business growth plan is a one to two year roadmap that describes your goals for business growth while a strategic business plan is a comprehensive three to five year vision and objectives including how to achieve them. Both a business growth plan and a strategic business plan have a marketing plan as well as a financial plan. The difference between the growth and strategic business plans is that a growth plan aims at expansion for increase in revenue while a strategic business plan aims at guiding a business towards achieving its long term objectives. 

Do All types of businesses need growth plans?

Yes, all types of businesses need growth plans especially in the current ever changing business environment.  Every business irregardless of size or industry will benefit from planning for growth. Growth doesn’t just happen, there is planning and action behind it and that is where a business growth plan comes into play. Any type of business plan needs a growth plan to identify and capitalize on growth opportunities. In addition, a well structured  growth plan  attracts investment to a business by showcasing its potential for profitability and future growth.