YOU have started your own business and for the first couple of years everything goes well — but then suddenly, and seemingly for no reason, it stops growing. Sales stagnate and no matter what you do you cannot get them going again.

This often tends to happen just when you least expect it, and it can be a scary experience for the business owner.

Provided you take decisive, focused action, it is possible to get over the hurdle. But you need to act fast. Firms cannot remain static for long — if they are not going forwards, they are going backwards.

David Abingdon, managing director of Quantum Organisation, a business development agency, believes the secret of growing a business is marketing and innovation.

"John Paul Getty once said that if you want to build a business you should look at what your competitors are doing and do it better," said Abingdon. "But today he would say 'look at what your competitors are doing and do it differently'.

"Too many business owners hit a plateau because they think they should be growing their business by doing it better than their competitors. But you can only be so much better. You have to knock on the door of innovation and do it differently instead.

"Look at your products, your service or your company and see how you can do it differently so customers see you as being the only choice."

But it is not enough just to innovate. If you are to grow your company successfully, you need to market your products and services effectively.

"Somebody once said that if you built the best mousetrap in the world, people would beat a path to your door," said Abingdon. "But if you don't market it, you will have a garage full of unsold mousetraps.

"Take video recorders. Betamax was a far superior product to VHS but it lost out to the bigger, clumsier VHS because of marketing."

Many small-business owners dismiss marketing simply as a cost rather than seeing it as a revenue generator, he said. But it is foolish even to have a marketing budget because that assumes that marketing is a cost rather than a revenue generator.

"If a £1,000 advertisement generates revenue of £1,200 and you have a marketing budget of £10,000, does that mean even though it is making a profit you stop running the ad after 10 times? Provided you have the cash, the marketing budget should be unlimited because it is self-generating."

Abingdon said many businesses hit a plateau because their owners could not let go and had their fingers in too many parts of the organisational pie. What the business really needed to grow was for them to back off.

The solution was to introduce proper operating systems so that the owner was freed from the day-to-day running of the business and had the time to look at the bigger picture. "Look at automating all the processes in the business, from administration, delivery and customer service, to sales and marketing."

Daniel Ronen, director of the Portman Business Consultancy, agreed that the key to growing a business was for the owner to recognise that he needed to take a less central role.

He said: "What tends to happen is that, as the business gets bigger, it starts to outgrow the ability of the owner to manage it. The owner then becomes a constraint on the business. He or she needs to start setting up formal structures, delegating and employing people for specific roles so they can run the business without the owner's personal intervention."

The secret of taking a business to a higher level was to concentrate on developing a close relationship with existing clients.

"Work out their needs and try to find out if there are any other opportunities that can be exploited," he said. "Consider what problems they may be facing and see how you can use the resources and capabilities of your business to fill the gaps."

Think hard about what you are ultimately trying to achieve. "That will dictate the speed of growth and the level of risk you want to have. If you are going for higher growth, you are going to be taking on potentially more risk. Growth for growth's sake is a dangerous game. You need to understand why you want to achieve it."

Robert Drew, chief executive of TEC, a forum for business leaders, said one reason why businesses tended to stagnate at about the £2m turnover level was that when they reached this point their nature started to change.

He said: "A lot of people start up businesses because they are fed up of being in a corporate empire. But as you go above £2m you start to replicate the reasons you left the corporate environment in the first place.

"So you have to make sure you have the management skills to run a larger business. You need to make a mental adjustment, because beyond the £2m level you are going to be stepping out of your comfort level as you have to hire more people and learn to delegate."

Drew said you might also find a different attitude among your competitors.

"If you have a 2% share of the market you are not going to be noticed too much. But beyond that, competitors will react because you become more of a nuisance to them. You may find the fight for market share harder and you will need to become more aggressive and more professional."

Rachel Bridge

PIZZA ADVICE PAYS OFF

WHEN sales began to stagnate at Angelo's Takeaway, which owns the pizza-delivery companies Bella Pizza and 2 for 1 in Northampton, director Martin Ibbotson, called in Quantum Organisation, a consultancy, to help get the business back on track.

On Quantum's advice, Ibbotson took immediate steps: he introduced staff training, insisted that all phones had to be answered within three rings, and started giving regulars free coleslaw and garlic bread.

Within four months, the number of customers reordering each week had risen from 60% to 90% and turnover had doubled.

Ibbotson said: "To be honest, we wouldn't be in the position we are in now without Quantum because they made us get the information we need to make the right business decisions.

"We thought we knew our business — but we didn't."