Breaking through the £5m turnover barrier in business can be a challenging task.

What you did to grow above the £1m turnover level is unlikely to get you over the £5m level.

If you want to break through, here are some important strategies that require proper thought, planning, focus and execution.

  1. Be really clear on your destination: What does the company look like in 5 years’ time. How much turnover, what’s the size of the team? What new skills do you need? What geographies will you occupy? Build the strategic plan. And pay attention to who’s bought in and who hasn’t.
  2. Focus on your target market: Identify your ideal customers and tailor your products or services to meet their needs. By focusing on a specific market segment, you can differentiate yourself from competitors and increase customer loyalty. Remember, not all customers are the right customers.
  3. Expand your product or service offering: Consider diversifying your product or service offering to appeal to a wider audience. Look for ways to generate recurring revenue – encourage customers to come back and offer increased value so they choose to spend more.
  4. Invest in marketing and branding: Done wisely and consistently, this will increase your visibility and attract more customers. Be smart about it. One of the best marketing communication strategies I’ve ever seen is from ekster.com – it’s well worth experiencing just how good they are at this. Concentrate on testing and measuring your results.
  5. Develop strategic partnerships: Identify potential partners who can help you reach your target market. This can include joint ventures, referral partnerships, and co-branding opportunities.
  6. Optimise your operations: Optimize your operations to increase efficiency and reduce costs. This can include automating processes, outsourcing non-core functions, and implementing lean management practices.
  7. Build a strong team: Hire and train a team of skilled professionals who can help you achieve your goals. Developing a strong leadership team, investing in employee training and development, and fostering a positive workplace culture. You’ll likely need to move from ‘generalists’ to ‘specialists’.
  8. Mergers and acquisitions: M&A will help you scale. Be creative about your thinking. I know of a lift manufacturing company that identified that their growth strategy would be delivered through working with local councils. Their problem. They didn’t have relationships with local councils. Their solution – buy a road maintenance company that did have the relationships. M&A needs careful strategic consideration, creative thinking and impeccable execution.
  9. Seek external funding: Organic growth is slow. Consider seeking external funding to finance your plans to scale and to make them happen faster. This can include bank loans, venture capital, or angel investors. Debt is not necessarily a bad thing. Badly managed debt is definitely a bad thing. So get clear on what you’re doing.
  10. Develop a culture of learning: You’ll all need to learn new things, particularly the leadership team. My experience is it’s the leadership team that is either the catalyst or the anchor.  Build personal development into your plans. Initiate strategic planning away days, and learn how to have highly effective board meetings where good decisions are made. Bring in the external talents of coaches and mentors. Some people may not want to or have the capability to extend themselves further – that’s OK. Just work out who and what you’ll do about it.
  11. Succession planning: What’s the strategy? How are you building the next level of talent in your business and preparing them for their future roles? It takes investment to do well – time and money. Successful companies that scale are very intelligent about how they grow their own talent.

Breaking through the £5m turnover barrier requires a combination of strategic planning, hard work, and perseverance.

By focusing on the right strategies, you can increase your chances of achieving this goal and taking your business to the next level. And you can have a lot of fun doing it. I did!