Business Development: A Guide to Small Business Strategy

Book excerpt: 'Business Development' provides a readable and practical book for the growth and development of businesses. This is primarily a textbook for the NVQ4 Business Development qualification, the Institute of Management Certificate in Owner Management courses, and HND Small business modules, but the text is also an invaluable practical guide to owner-managers of small businesses. All businesses pass through several stages of growth and it occurs for a number of reasons, such as change in the commercial market, increased customer demand for services or product, higher numbers of customers. Business Development shows how to make the most of this growth and also how to deal with the different types of problems that are encountered along the way. The book is structured to follow a logical sequence of questions that makes it readily accessible: Where are we now? Where do we want to go? What resources are needed to get there? What sales and marketing policies do we need to develop? It examines the personnel and staffing implications, the efficiency of the current financial management process, and the owner's own abilities to make it all happen. Most important of all it makes the owner-manager takes a long, hard look at the business and where it is really going.