[Advertorial] Starting a micro business can sometimes be difficult. Discover our practical tips to grow your micro-business effectively and efficiently.

Close relationships are essential for many customers. They want to do business with people who know their name and take the time to really understand their needs and wants. This can sometimes be difficult for global companies due to their nature and size.

However, for many micro businesses working from home, maintaining this level of service is a challenge to ensure their success and growth.

Here are our top tips for growing without losing your personal touch.

Have a clear plan

It may sound obvious, but you might be surprised at how much time micro businesses spend tackling challenges – sometimes so much that they don’t have a chance to develop a plan for the future.

With a clear business plan, your chances of growth increase significantly. So it pays to take a moment to think realistically about your goals.

The goal is to create a plan that describes where you are now, where you want to be in 3-5 years, and what you need to do to get there.

What does it mean to you to grow your business? Gain new clients? Are you adding new products to your range or offering new services?

Of course, this comes with researching the market you wish to expand into. What customer needs will you meet? How can you perform better or differently than the competition?

It’s a good idea to have conversations with your potential customers and get a better idea of ​​what they want to buy. If you’re a micro-business that has a very close relationship with your customers, you may want to bring this up in conversation rather than conduct a formal survey.

Learn to delegate

As a micro business owner, you may be used to managing all aspects of your business at the micro level.

However, many sole proprietors who have started their business from scratch find it very difficult to relinquish control to others. Still, it’s an inevitable part of business growth. As difficult as it is, achieving significant growth requires learning how to delegate to others and automate workflows and processes as much as possible (see below).

Why can this still be difficult? In addition to the mindset change that this adjustment requires, there is also a lot of work and risk involved in recruiting new people to help you grow your business. Contact a recruitment office or use an online recruitment platform to simplify the process.

Automate non-essential processes

No matter how easily a company sells the service or product, there is still a lot of administrative work to be done in many areas to keep everything running smoothly. If you’re not careful, your business can easily grow out of control and create risks that affect the quality of your customer service.

And then there are the automation services.

Whether it’s contract management, marketing, accounting and payroll, or any other business process you can think of, there are cloud-based platforms that you can use to outsource these functions.

Ultimately, automating processes means you have less work overall, so you can spend your time on providing your customers with the best possible experience or on the strategic consideration mentioned in point 1.

Subscription services can also help you with printing. With our EcoPro plan, which allows you to spread the cost of a printer across a series of affordable monthly payments, the ink or toner cartridges you need are delivered exactly when you need them, so you don’t have to worry about ordering must. So you can keep printing everything to keep your customers happy without worrying about the logistics of your printer.

Discover how you can save time and control the costs of your printing solution with an EcoPro subscription for just €1.99 per month.

This is a commercial contribution from Brother Belgium. The publishers are not responsible for the content.