Month: May 2024

When you work alone, it can be difficult to give your clients your full attention while also driving business development. However, with the right attitude and priorities, it is completely possible! Read on for our top business growth ideas for solopreneurs.

What are the barriers to business development for people who work alone?

When we work alone, it’s really difficult to scale up our businesses. We have limited capacity, and once all our working time slots are full, there are no more hours available for us to earn from. This means that marketing, cold calling and other business development approaches probably won’t deliver what we need, because our businesses aren’t scalable.

On the other hand, we want to grow our businesses. No business owner is prepared to stay put forever. Instead, we need to take courage and think differently!

Top business growth ideas for solopreneurs

  1. Be so good they can’t ignore you!

If we’re going to grow, we have to be unquestionably, unapologetically good at what we do. This puts us in a strong position to charge a higher rate. It can also help us establish ourselves as thought leaders, helping us to build a reputation that can help us launch other revenue streams that do not place demands on our time.

  • Remember that your expertise is valuable

Whatever we do, we probably find it enjoyable and easy – that’s why we do it! But remember too that the reason there is a market for our services is because not everyone can do what we do. Our knowledge and expertise have value.

Once we’ve established this mindset, it’s easier to see other ways we can share our expertise and grow our businesses too. Could we accept a speaking engagement? Better yet, could we accept two speaking engagements? That way, we can say almost the same thing to two different audiences and earn twice the revenue for one-and-a-half times the input.  

  • Create other revenue streams

We’ve established that regular work is limited by the number of hours we have available. But that doesn’t mean we can’t generate income in a way that doesn’t eat into our time. For example, collating expertise into a book enables us to earn from book sales while we are doing our regular client work. Depending on our business, we could sell branded products, or develop paid-for content too.

  • Offer packages

Creating a package of top services is a great way to move away from the hourly-rate model that is holding back our business growth. For example, if you offer web design, consider offering web design and hosting as a package and gain a regular monthly income from it. Packages usually mean better service for your client because they have peace of mind knowing that everything is covered. And it’s good news for your business growth too – more money goes into the business on a regular basis while still leaving you time to do what you love.

  • Work with other people

Even with these ideas, there will still come a time when we cannot keep doing everything ourselves. When this happens, it’s time to accept help. Some business owners choose to employ staff. Others choose to outsource the tasks they find most challenging (see previous remarks about no one being good at everything!) – this frees them up to focus on their core business.

Outsource business development services

If your business would benefit from extra support, we hope you’ll consider Get Ahead. Many of our clients are in the scale-up phase of business growth, using outsourced support as an affordable solution as they grow. Explore our site or follow us on LinkedIn to find out more.

Basingstoke-based businesswomen Kristy Roff and Suzanne Evett, owners of Get Ahead South, are delighted to be celebrating five successful years in business.

Friends for over sixteen years, Kristy and Suzanne founded their Get Ahead franchise in May 2019 to work flexibly around their families and gain a better work-life balance. After a successful start, they had to navigate the challenges of COVID-19 and homeschooling. But with restrictions eased, they seized the opportunity to accelerate their business growth, expanding into Surrey to create a new Get Ahead South superhub in 2022 and winning the Great British Franchisee Awards in 2023.

Commenting on the milestone, Kristy said: “Becoming partners with Get Ahead was a great decision for us, and we would wholeheartedly recommend it. The freedom it has given us to balance work and family life has been life-changing.

Suzanne and I are living proof that going into business with a friend can be rewarding and highly successful. We are both mums juggling work and family life. But we boldly decided to put life in our own hands by starting our own business. It was a scary step, but we wouldn’t change a thing. There have been tough times for both the business and us personally, but it has all been part of the journey.”

Rebecca Newenham, founder of Get Ahead, said: “I am so proud of all that Kristy and Suzanne have achieved in the last five years. It was an honour to accompany them to the HSBC British Franchise Awards 2023 and see them gain recognition for all their hard work. Kristy and Suzanne have navigated all the challenges of running a business and a family, particularly through a global pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis, with such resilience and professionalism. They are a shining example of how to do franchising well.

Over the past five years, they have grown their own territory and expanded into new territories to accelerate the development of their business. They launched a new monthly networking event in 2023, Get Connected, which proved to be so successful that it has now spread to seven cities across the South East. They have supported their local business community and played a vital role in supporting the Get Ahead franchise network, mentoring new franchisees and transforming our internal processes. They have so much to reflect on and celebrate. I look forward to continuing to support them in the coming years. I’m sure great things are ahead for this brilliant partnership.”

Get Ahead offers a comprehensive range of nationwide marketing and business support services designed to help businesses of all sizes and from all sectors get ahead. With regional directors in Berkshire, Bournemouth, East Midlands, Essex, Harrogate, Kent, Leeds, North Hampshire, Oxford, Southampton, Suffolk, Surrey, West London and York, Get Ahead is well-placed to support growing businesses.

To learn more, contact Kristy and Suzanne at (0118) 380 5130 or visit https://getaheadva.com/.

Virtual sales team –  what’s most effective for business development?

An increasing number of businesses are choosing to use a virtual sales team. From digital marketing to cold calling, there are a variety of way for business owners to drive growth and connect with new customers.

In this blog, we talk to Vicky McKenna, regional director of Get Ahead Oxfordshire, who shares her insights into our most popular business development services and which one might work for you.

Why are so many businesses choosing to use a virtual sales team?

Vicky: One of the most interesting statistics to come out of a recent Get Ahead survey is the 11% increase in clients choosing our business development services. This indicates two interesting business trends:

Firstly, more businesses are aware of the need to put their energy into business growth – they’re actively pursuing it instead of just accepting the status quo and crossing their fingers. This is good news – it raises the bar for business leadership, as well as meaning that more businesses are likely to succeed in the long term. I’ve always been horrified that 50% of businesses fail in the first three years – active business development could reduce that figure considerably.

Secondly, the increase in outsourcing business development shows that business owners are looking at what the competition is doing. We’ve already seen this race in social media, which has gone from being a nice-to-have to a business essential. In the same way, strategic business development is becoming the norm. More business owners are realising that what they have is worth shouting about, as long as they shout louder than the competition!

What are the most popular business development services?

Vicky: Our survey of clients – who have businesses of all shapes and sizes and are located all over the country – shows that 38% come to us for digital marketing to drive their business growth. This includes email marketing, SEO, pay per click and more. We don’t know exactly why this is, but we are aware there are many aspects of digital marketing that make sense to outsource. For example, I couldn’t jump straight on Mailchimp and send out a marketing email – my role is talking to clients on an individual level and matching them to virtual experts. If I need to send out a marketing email, I outsource it to one of our team who’ll put it together in less than an hour.

The second most popular is social media, which 28% of our clients ask for. While most of us know how to write a post and share it on Facebook or LinkedIn, we also know what a drain on time social media can be, and how hard it is to post consistently. For this reason, our clients find it’s more efficient to outsource social media for business development.

In third place is customer relationship management and sales campaigns. As with digital marketing, these are areas where it’s useful to have an expert take the lead, which would account for their popularity among Get Ahead clients.

What’s the best business development approach?

Vicky: We’ve seen that digital marketing is the most popular, followed by social media and CRM. However, the best business development approach is the one that works for your business and delivers the best return on your investment.

Different businesses grow in different ways. Some gain more customers, while others evolve, improve or find their niche. Each of these approaches needs strategy behind it to be effective – the strategy will also highlight what business development approach will be the best for your organisation.

If you’re ready to develop your business but you don’t know where to start, Get Ahead can help. I’m part of a team of regional directors – each of one of us helps clients identify the right solution for their unique business and we can help you too. Explore our site to find out more and get in touch whenever you’re ready!