Growth is rarely as simple as deciding you want more customers.
For engineering and manufacturing businesses, growth can mean entering a new market, diversifying into a different sector, increasing sales with existing customers, launching a new product or simply building a healthier pipeline.
But knowing where you want to go and knowing what to do next are two very different things.
Where does growth actually start?
Before investing more time and money into marketing or business development, it’s worth taking a step back.
Do you know:
- which markets offer the strongest opportunities?
- what makes your business different from its competitors?
- whether your proposition is clear to potential customers?
- which sectors and customers you should prioritise?
- whether your marketing is actually generating opportunities?
- what you should be measuring?
For busy SME manufacturers, these questions can easily get pushed down the priority list.
There is always something more immediate to deal with, from customers and quotations to recruitment, production and supply chain pressures.
But getting clarity on these fundamentals can make the difference between strategic growth and simply chasing opportunities as they appear.
Taking stock before deciding what comes next
A useful starting point is to assess where the business is today.
Horizon Works has developed a free Industrial Growth Assessment specifically for engineering, manufacturing and industrial businesses.
The online assessment takes around two minutes and asks 12 questions covering areas including target markets, proposition, strategy, communications, lead generation and measurement. It then provides instant feedback highlighting potential strengths, risks, priorities and actions.
Rather than looking at marketing in isolation, it provides a useful prompt for leadership teams to think about some of the wider building blocks needed to support sustainable growth.
A useful conversation starter
No assessment can create a growth strategy for you, of course.
But the value of tools like this can be in the questions they encourage you to ask.
Perhaps your business has a strong reputation but isn’t communicating its capabilities effectively outside its existing customer base.
Maybe diversification is the priority, but your proposition hasn’t yet been adapted for the new sector you’re targeting.
Or perhaps you’re generating plenty of activity without having the measures in place to understand what’s actually delivering results.
Identifying those gaps gives you somewhere to start.
And for engineering and manufacturing SMEs, where management teams are often juggling strategic priorities alongside the day-to-day realities of running the business, a clear starting point can be surprisingly valuable.
See where your business stands
If growth, diversification or entering new markets is on your agenda, the Industrial Growth Assessment is worth a couple of minutes.
You can try the free Industrial Growth Assessment here.
It might confirm that you’re already heading in the right direction, or highlight something worth taking another look at.
Either way, understanding where you are now is a pretty good place to start when deciding where you want to go next.
