So you have a small business just making a profit, but you really want a bigger and more profitable business. How do you make the jump from small to large?

Business Plan and Strategy

1. Revisit your business plan and update it to reflect recent changes.
2. Start thinking bigger look at what you want to become in say three years and then work backwards to see what you have to do to meet these targets.
3. Add these to goals, activities etc to your business plan.

Finances

4. Fine tune your turnover to ensure that it is running at its maximum capability.
5. Ensure that you are financially stable and able to borrow enough to fund your expansion.

Operational Structure

6. Review your operational efficiency until it is at its optimum.
7. Review what you need to improve, change or increase in order to cope with an extra output.
8. Review your stock levels and ensure that they are at an optimum level.
9. Review your office, store, production line and stock room will they be big enough to cope with your planned expansion?

Product Range

10. Look for any other niches you can sell in.
11. Ensure that you have a full product range that meets your market requirements.
12. Look at improving key sellers in your product range.
13. Ensure you have up sells available to increase your total sales figures.
14. Introduce additional products that will improve your appeal to your market.

Staff

15. Ensure that your staff are trained, motivated and informed.
16. Identify key staff that you wish develop as your business grows.
17. Develop a communications plan so that all your involved staff are aware of and involved in your business changes.
18. Be prepared to bring in professional help, consultancy and protection to help with your expansion.

Lastly and most importantly, ensure that your expansion is planned and controlled. Many a large company has become a much smaller company because they expanded far too quickly. If you dont believe me then look up what happened to Sock Shop, Body Shop and Marks and Spencers, to name a few that lost money when they expanded too rapidly.

Lee Lister

Lee Lister is Management Consultant and Program Manager with more than 25 year's management and consultancy experience and more than 20 year's program and project management experience in projects for Banking, Finance, Insurance, Leisure and Government bodies. She also have more than 10 years bid management experience ranging from bids for medium companies to large international and infrastructure bids.

British born, Lee received her BA(Hons) Financial Economics from the University of Essex. She went on to work in or for a considerable number of countries within Asia and Europe as well as Australia and the United States. While building a name for herself through helping company restructure, change management and project management consultancy, Lee became a well-known figure for her skills in analyzing, problem solving and trouble-shooting. She has consulted for many major industries, including banking, telecommunications, insurance, transportation, leisure and governments from many different countries. Some of the companies who have benefited from Lee?s expertise are Hewlett Packard, Siemans Nixdorf, Electrolux and the Philippines government.

Whilst working in the Far East she became a recognized expert on preparing and evaluating large World Bank Proposals (infrastructure projects within developing countries). These accomplishments called upon the skills of bid and project management, risk assessment, contract negotiation and supplier management and required dedicated work to very tight time scales. This expertise was acknowledged by an invitation to be the principle speaker at an International Business Development Conference in Washington, USA. She has also consulted at very senior level in several countries.

She owns and manages two companies, Biz Guru LLC in the USA and Biz Guru Services Ltd in the UK as well a considerable number of profitable web sites. She works almost entirely via the internet, visiting clients on site during major consultancies and training. Her Internet skills span from when major companies first started to consider obtaining their own web sites. During these years, she has kept up to date with the rapid changes on the internet, including the dot com boom and the resulting bust ? which her own web based companies survived.

She regularly consults, writes and lectures on business, bid management and marketing and has published numerous courses and books.