Once you’ve established yourself as an entrepreneur, having a successful business is not just about merely being profitable. Making money is critical in the early days of setting up your business. But once you cross that line, it’s about creating a sustainable business with staying power and visibility.

Having a well-thought-out business plan is crucial to bridging the gap between having a small successful business and having sustainable, incremental growth. These days, the level of business success is determined by many variables, only one of which is profit.

Brand Recognition

Brand recognition is about how well-known you are within your industry niche, as well as within the broader community at large. Achieving brand recognition requires targeted marketing strategies that ensure you are seen at all the right places at the right times.  It always helps to have a unique stand-out-brand to start with.

Quality Portfolio

Every successful brand has a quality portfolio of products, offerings or services. At the end of the day, marketing spends will not be able to save you from the repercussions of launching a faulty or undesirable product. This brings us to the significance of having authentic market research that zones in on the actual needs and wants of users, and creating an offering that over-delivers on both.

Customers rate quality, consistency, utility, functionality, design, and aesthetics highly.  Once the marketing hype dies down, it is the product that will sustain your business.

Customer Loyalty

Another important variable that distinguishes business success is customer loyalty. Brand loyalty can be fickle when there is ample choice. With more and more competitors, businesses have to work harder than ever to be the preferred choice for customers everywhere.

Ensuring customer loyalty requires an integrated top-to-bottom approach from within the business. Ensuring “customer happiness” requires the buy-in of all departments, including product and development, marketing and sales, customer service, as well as technical support. Customers are more likely to want to stay with an organization, where the stakeholders are vested in capturing and retaining customer loyalty.

Social Consciousness

Giving back to the community and showing a human face in times of conflict or distress speaks volumes about how successful an organization really is. Companies with “social consciousness” actively take part in programs that benefit their community at large, whether it’s donating to charities or sponsoring health programs, for instance. In turn, initiatives that display social consciousness create brand visibility and encourage customer loyalty.

Last but Not the Least, Profit

Profit is, understandably, the key reason why many entrepreneurs start businesses. However, once the initial goals have been met, most entrepreneurs are looking to scale up and expand their businesses as the next logical step.  All of the above-listed variables such as brand recognition, customer loyalty, quality portfolio, social consciousness, and profit feed off of each other to some degree. If all the elements work well together, increased profit is inevitable.

A coach can help your business to scale and thrive in the 5 areas listed above. Get in touch today!