• Login to your Mentoring or Board account (programme members only)

    • Help with...

    How can we develop new products and services?

    After being active in the market for some time, it’s likely you’ll need to expand your catalogue of products or services so that your business can continue to grow and not rely on an offering that may become dated. While developing a new asset is challenging, with the right market research and development roadmap, this new phase in your business can be worth the investment and take your company in exciting new directions.

    Ways to help you deal with it:

    Action plan

    Developing a new product or service

    Effort : High
    Impact : High
    Creating a new product or service for your business and not sure where to start? Follow our five-step action plan.

    ACTION PLANS are a structured list of steps designed to help you approach tackling a particular business challenge.

    • We explain why each step is important
    • Customise by setting your own completion dates and assign tasks
    • Helpful tools are provided for certain steps
    • A downloadable PDF version of each action plan is available

    Action plan

    Planning cash flow during a period of growth

    Effort : Medium
    Impact : Medium
    Financial planning is crucial during periods of growth. Our five-step plan will help you manage finances and take advantage of the opportunity.

    Action plan

    Using research to understand the business landscape

    Effort : Low
    Impact : Medium
    This action plan looks at how business leaders can use different types of research to build a better understanding of the business landscape.

    Action plan

    Identify a new target customer

    Effort : Medium
    Impact : High
    Identifying new customers prevents an overreliance on existing clients and can connect you to valuable opportunities. Use our action plan to get started.

    Action plan

    Growing sales with existing customers

    Effort : Medium
    Impact : High
    Creating more value for existing customers provides a sustainable way to grow your business. Follow our five-step plan to figure out the opportunity.

    Guide

    An introduction to developing new products and services

    Developing a new product or service for your business can be a daunting process. Here’s a guide to help you get started.

    GUIDES break a challenge down, providing important context and real-world experiences.

    • Based on SME experiences, not corporate jargon
    • Filled with real-world stories
    • Achievable steps every business can take

    Other support that's available

    Developing new products and services

    Developing new products and services

    Don’t know where to begin? Business Gateways’ step-by-step guide will take you from market research through to funding your new product or service.

    Using a product roadmap

    Using a product roadmap

    These free customisable product roadmap templates are a great place to start when it comes to developing a new product or service.

    How other businesses have tackled something similar

    Rob Law, Trunki

    Real business story

    Customer feedback is essential for product development

    Customer feedback should be an essential part of product development — before and after launch. Hearing what customers think offered Trunki valuable insight into whether products were meeting expectations..
    Kane Dowell, Ask Mummy and Daddy

    Real business story

    Conducting market research led to new export opportunities

    Discovering new customers to target requires research, but Ask Mummy & Daddy quickly realised the importance of being realistic about the time and money you can afford to invest..
    Mike Crook, PracticeWeb

    Real business story

    Comprehensive research is the key to creating a hyper-relevant offering

    Talking to clients and looking at products offered by competitors and companies in related sectors helped PracticeWeb’s lead generation grow exponentially..

    The questions lots of businesses are trying to answer

    What issue is keeping you awake at night? A bit of targeted support is often all you need to overcome those challenges.

    Select a topic

    Digital

    How can I improve the digital presence my business has? How should I go about collecting data to improve my business? How should I use the data I have to improve decision making? How can I streamline and automate some of our business processes? How do I work out the best digital sales channels to use? How do I assess and choose the right technology to improve business operations? How do I effectively seek external digital support? How can I understand what digital tools or support my business needs? How do I know if my technology is robust enough for growth? How should I best budget and plan for new technology investments?

    Leadership & Strategy

    How do I learn to become a better leader? How do I improve the communication in my business? How do I get staff interested in our vision and values? How can I reflect on my own strengths and weaknesses as a leader? How do I give my team autonomy and get better at delegating? As a leader, how do I learn to trust others within my organisation? How do I apply learnings from other businesses to my own company? How should my role as a business leader evolve with the company’s growth? How can I balance short-term needs with long-term targets? How do I get better at noticing and reacting to warning signs?

    People & Team

    How can I improve my hiring and onboarding practices? How can I develop the skillsets of my workforce? How can I develop career paths for my staff? How can I run a better appraisals process? How should I performance manage my staff? How do I deal with a challenging member of staff? How can I increase staff engagement and motivation? How can I keep my best members of staff? How do I manage an effective remote workforce? How can I reduce employee turnover?

    Planning

    How do I better inform my business plans? How do I know when to scale up my business? How can I define and communicate my vision for success? How do I ensure my business can navigate a dip in trading? How do I know when to invest in my business? How can I get better at looking internally at my business? How can I get staff interested in the financial situation? How can I make my business more resilient to change? How can I balance ambition with setting realistic goals? How can I work out what required skillsets are missing in the business?

    Sales & Growth

    How can we develop new products and services? How do I develop a clear unique selling point? How can we better serve our most loyal customers? How do I financially plan for new opportunities? How do I build a network to support my business? How can I get a better return on investment from my marketing? How can I identify new customers to target? How do I create targets and KPIs for my staff? How do I make sure my team and processes are ready for growth? How do I benchmark my business against competitors?
    All