Seven Stages Of Business Life Cycle

The Seven Stages of a Business Life Cycle

When looking at the stages in life, it can also be useful to examine the 7 stages of a business life cycle. These are:

1. Seed/Conception – this is the thought or an idea for a business venture; finding a right niche that is needed by people, that you can provide with your skills and abilities. Doing lots of thinking, planning and preparation so that you can make this idea into something tangible that will work in practice. Creating a business plan at this stage often ensures success. You’ll need correct managers and staff in place, a business model, with plans for future development. Whilst these can be tweaked and amended as you go along, it’s nice to have an overall plan in mind from the outset,

Established – when you reach this stage, by now your business is thriving, and you will have regular and loyal customers who return to you for business time and time again. You’ll have settled into a routine, but it’s important not to become complacent or stagnant with your methods. Things change in life rapidly, and it’s important to keep up to date with social changes, and reflect these in your business. You need to continue to streamline processes, and continue to ensure that you’re providing the best quality you can and that your customers are happy. You need to keep checking to see that your business still works? Still meets customer’s needs? Is still a good idea and don’t be afraid to change things to make them fit. Whilst it’s difficult to come to terms with something, if it was successful but no longer is, something needs doing about this, if that’s the case. Drawing upon all your team-members will help to keep this in

Mature – If for years your business has ticked along nicely, but sales do start to decrease, then you perhaps need to make a decision as to whether you adapt and expand your business, or whether you decide to exit your business. Sometimes it can depend on how much more money you’re prepared to invest in the business, and whether you think this will be worthwhile and bring your profits in the long run. Or whether to consider exiting the business. You can initially think about ways of reducing costs (this can sometimes unfortunately lead to making staff redundancies, if not as many staff are needed to handle the products and business). It’s a time of making difficult decisions, and it’s at this point where the manager or CEO will need a lot of support from a good team, to bounce ideas off. It is also a time, which requires a balancing act of managing the short-term day-to-day business of keeping the existing company running as normal; whilst making long-term decisions about the company’s future. Whichever decision you make, whether you decide to expand or exit, you need a clear strategy to follow to make this difficult time well-ordered and organised with a definite