Pretty much all business owners, no matter the size of their firm, share one common aim: to grow their business and increase its value. Whether you’re the new owner of a business looking to future growth, or you’re planning to sell your current one, increasing its value is equally important to both aims.

Talk of increasing your business’ value may conjure up thoughts of wildly ambitious or complex growth strategies that take years to come to fruition. In reality, however, while long-term growth is certainly something to focus on, there are also numerous simple steps you can take to increase your business’ value.

Get your files in order
The importance of well-organised paperwork and files cannot be understated. This is equally true whether you’re looking to sell your company or planning for your future with the business and mapping out a route to growth.

If you’re selling, organised files will be extremely helpful to your buyer’s due diligence and can thus help improve their valuation. When planning for future growth, meanwhile, well-organised paperwork can not only make things smoother around the office, it can be vital in helping you identify areas where you can improve, become more efficient and increase your profits.

Invest in your staff
One of the most important assets of any business is its staff. As a result, it stands to reason that employees play a huge role in the value of a business. Investing in your staff, therefore, can pay major dividends as you seek to increase your company’s value.

There are numerous ways in which you can invest in your staff to make them happier and more productive. Simple steps such as rewards schemes and regular social activities can help employees feel happier in their work.

At the same time, adopting practices such as recruiting for roles from within the company can help employees feel more valued and motivated, while they can also feel more engaged if they are encouraged and given the opportunity to upskill and afforded freedom to try new things within their existing role.

All of these steps can help to create a happier, more focused and more motivated workforce. This, in turn, can drive greater productivity and higher profits. A happier workforce can also help your business’ cashflow by reducing staff turnover.

Focus on your USP
A company’s Unique Selling Point (USP) is what drives business by helping the firm stand out from its competition. While diversifying your business can undoubtedly be a great way to boost its value, it can be even more important to focus on improving what your business already does well.

When it comes to driving growth at your company and increasing its value, make sure you keep in mind what your USP is and use that as a guiding principle for your future plans. After all, losing sight of what a business does well is a common theme among companies that run into difficulties.

Strategise for the future
With simple measures like these in place to lay the groundwork for future growth, it might be easy to think you need to go big and start planning on a grander scale. While it is undoubtedly important to have a long-term growth strategy, it can be just as vital to ensure that this plan is carefully detailed and based as much on incremental, short-term goals as long-term targets.

Make sure you have a detailed, carefully plotted and well documented strategic plan set out for your long-term growth strategy. One of the best ways to successfully reach the big goals and milestones in your long-term plan is to set short term ones along the way. And, ultimately, successful long-term growth can be the single most important route to increasing your business’ value.