How to grow your business in 2024?

With 2024 in full swing, it is important business owners are considering how to drive growth throughout the year.

To constantly stay ahead of your competitors and overcome challenges, consistent growth is imperative to ensure you are always ahead of the curve. At Oldfield, our advice is tailored around a deep understanding of accurate financial performance and practical strategies that focus on supporting you in realising the true value of your business. With that in mind, here are some tips to help kickstart your growth in 2024:

Understanding insights 

It is important to look at your performance in 2023 and to be as objective as possible. This will help you establish goals and finalise your budgets for the coming year based on recent financial performance and history.

You need to ensure that you understand the data to give you the best starting point when you begin to look at goals and targets for 2024. Understanding your financial health ensures that you can make informed business decisions based on facts. It is essential that you have a full financial plan and budgets in place and finalised now, including balance sheet forecasts to ascertain the financial viability of your plans for this year. 

Finding direction

Like recent years, 2024 is likely going to be full of much uncertainty. You must create a business strategy, as this will guarantee you are prepared for whatever this year throws at you. Your strategy should include the key areas of business like sales, finances, business development, and marketing. Starting with an in-depth review of 2023 is a good place to start when finalising your strategy. 

Many businesses would have had their own internal strategy discussions by now, but being clear on your business goals in 2024 is key, where do you want to head and why? Once you have established what your long-term goals for the year are, it is important to set smaller goals to ensure you have the best opportunity to hit your long-term goals. Remember to make sure that they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely, and measurable so that you can be aware of where your business is at.

Communication of the strategy and the 'why' to the whole team is important in view of alignment and a cohesive effort to achieve these goals.

Throughout the year you need to allow yourself to step back and identify how your business is performing and what changes you need to make to hit your goals. We can help you plan for every area of your business so that it all dovetails together with a clear financial plan for success. 

Executing efficiency

Making constant small changes in the way you run your business is key to delivering results. Performing a SWOT analysis is a good way to reveal blind spots that perhaps you might not be able to identify on a day-to-day basis.

It is more important than ever to regularly look at opportunities and threats in today’s uncertain economic climate. Ideally, you should look to perform a SWOT analysis once every quarter, to ensure that you are staying ahead of the curve. 

Ongoing accountability

Once you have established your goals, you need to identify which KPIs you will use to monitor your progress and success. By implementing KPIs within your company, it means you can monitor your goals, devise a strategy to reach them, and evaluate your performance along the way.

Becoming accountable for your business plan is an important factor as you need to consider the repercussions if you’re not hitting the KPIs as you planned to. You need to spend time each week assessing how things are going and what changes can be implemented to improve. At Oldfield, we become accountability partners for you to drive smart growth. 

We are here to help your business grow profitability, generate cash, and increase its value. We have specifically designed service packages to take your business to the next level, including quarterly face-to-face or online meetings, a well-structured business growth programme and unlimited day-to-day support.

If you would like to discover more about how we can help you grow and support you and your business in 2024, get in touch to book a no-obligation 30-minute tailored discussion with one of our consultants. For your prosperity, tomorrow, start planning today.  

Please note: This article is provided for information only and was correct as at time of writing (22/01/24). Any lists and details provided above are not exhaustive and are not intended to be full and complete guidance.  No action should be taken without consulting detailed legislation or seeking independent professional advice. Therefore no responsibility for loss occasioned by any person acting or refraining from action as a result of the material contained in this article can be accepted.