4 ways a growing business can grow even faster

Running a successful business is an incredible experience. When you're on the right market, with the right timing and a healthy dose of traction, you're unstoppable. However, even when your business is in this enviable position, its continued success depends on your ability to focus your time and capital in the right places.

Matt Hulett has experience growing businesses from zero to $1 billion in gross sales. He has also successfully guided several underperforming companies, including Rosetta Stone, RealNetworks and Expedia, to double-digit growth. The author of Unlock, Hulett's advice on how startups and established businesses can increase growth and build resilience are regularly featured in major media outlets.

"A common problem with fast-growing businesses is what I call 'spray and pray', which means you're trying to do too much and therefore don't do very well", Hulett said. To avoid this problem, focus on increasing customer lifetime value, exploiting overlooked opportunities, data mining, and expanding your arsenal. This will help you seize exciting and lucrative opportunities for growth and expansion.

1. Stop the dollars from going to your competitors

"The easiest way to generate more effective sales for your business is to get your current customers to buy more than one product from you," Hulett says. "Focusing on selling more to the same customer not only allows companies to generate more revenue from their customers, but also prevents money from flowing back to your competitors."

There are several ways to approach this strategy, including bundling, upselling, and cross-selling. Bundling multiple offers into a single package is a great way to increase customer lifetime value while providing customers with a real or perceived benefit. This allows companies to spend more money on customer acquisition because the average order value increases and ensures that competitors do not get any of the components of the bundle sold.

Upselling is all about getting an existing customer to increase their spending with you by offering an additional or improved version of your product. It allows you to increase your sales volume for each customer. Cross-selling is selling complementary products to your existing customer base. You can decide to create them yourself or partner with creators of new products or services that are effective in cross-selling.

2. Exploit overlooked opportunities

It's also important to allocate time and resources to acquiring new customers, and there are two main ways to do this. “You can create a new product in the same market for a different customer, or take the same product with the same customer and sell it in a new market,” Hulett explained.

Ways you can consider selling to new customers include geography, segment, and channel. Geographic expansion, for example, may be appropriate if you have outgrown an existing market or have seen an advantage in another market.

You can also expand your sales through direct sales from a website, direct sales force, etc., or indirectly expand your channels using a reseller. Examples of resellers include third-party e-commerce websites, an app store, an offline store (for example, a grocery store or department store), or a value-added reseller (a business that integrates your solution with another set of products and services).

To give yourself the best chance of success, look for small markets that grow very quickly. Then select which opportunities you will pursue based on your ability to effect change using your existing resources, team, and momentum. By expanding into a small but growing niche, you can tap into opportunities that companies already in that market may have overlooked.