7 Things Your Business Must Do to Survive and Thrive

Are you interested in starting a business? During the research stage, you may come across statistics showing that 23.2% of private sector companies in the U.S. go belly up within a year. 

And if a business survives that first tenuous year, it’s not out of the woods because 48% of businesses crash and burn within five years, and 65.3% fail within 10 years.

Since you’ll want your company to remain going for the long term, consider these seven things new companies must do to survive and thrive.

1. Stay on Top of Finances

Many new companies get into trouble on the finances front. Ensure you have a team responsible for bookkeeping and accounting, generate financial reports periodically, and comb over them. You must stay on top of your company’s financial situation since money troubles could be the proverbial stick of dynamite under the foundation of your young company. 

2. Generate Leads

Lead generation is essential for businesses and at all stages of growth. Doing it right can boost profitability, awareness, ROI, revenue, and customer base. If you’re not generating new leads, you’ll either see growth level off or dip altogether. When considering lead generation, look at different strategies to see what works for your business. 

3. Focus on Existing Clients

When looking to grow your business, it’s easy to focus more on finding new clients than serving the ones you already have. But it’s costlier to bring new customers on board than to hold onto your existing client base. You don’t want a churn rate where the rate at which you find new customers is offset by the rate at which existing customers look elsewhere.

Whatever you did to win your customers, continue doing to earn their ongoing patronage. You need a customer-centric corporate culture that prioritizes offering great customer service. That’s the only way to increase the odds of customers sticking around for the long haul.

4. Find Ways to Save Money

When starting a new business, you must find ways to save money. That can include investing in software that helps you do more with less. For instance, you can use invoicing software if you don’t have a dedicated payroll department. Accounting, inventory management, and other software packages can also help your business save money that can be used for other things.

5. Invest in Your Business

While money might be tight, you must invest in your company. You need to sink money into developing products and services and innovating to set your offering apart from the competition. Investing in your business also means focusing on your workers, website, and marketing initiatives. Such investments will be money well-spent.

6. Find Your Demographic Online

With billions of people worldwide on social media, it pays to find and connect with them online. Social media makes it easy to target your specific demographic, and it can be more cost-effective to launch marketing campaigns online than in newspapers or magazines. 

You can find new customers and stay in touch with current customers. If social media isn’t part of your marketing and outreach efforts, you’re leaving money on the table.

7. Hire the Right People

Focus on finding the right people for your business. In the early going, some workers may need to wear multiple hats. So, it’s vital to find versatile employees. While stretching workers too thin isn’t a good idea, you need people who can do more than their job descriptions. Starting a company is easy. But growing it so that it survives for the long haul isn’t. Remember these recommendations to increase the odds of your company being successful.