With 2024 underway, small and medium business owners around the world are looking for creative ways to drive growth and increase revenues in the year ahead.

All progress starts with a plan, so we’ve put together our top tips for getting your business into shape this year.

Whether it’s expanding into new markets, hiring team members abroad or simplifying your stock take, we’ve put together expert advice on helping you to do business without borders in 2024.

With a Wise Business account you can hold, pay and get paid in multiple currencies with low, transparent fees and an easy to use app on desktop and mobile to help you manage cashflow on the go.

How to grow your business with Wise

Plan for success

Whether you’re a sole trader or a CEO building a fast-growing team, every business can benefit from a structured approach to setting goals and planning. Getting clarity on objectives, key results and core revenue sources will be key to helping you grow in 2024.

Mapping out the year month-by-month or on a quarterly basis can help you to build a realistic roadmap for growth. Here are some key questions to ask yourself when building your plan for 2024:

• What are realistic revenue, outgoings and net profit targets for this year based on previous performance and wider economic trends?
• What needs to change in the next 3 months to help me meet these targets?
• What are the 3 most exciting growth opportunities for my business right now?
• What are the 3 resources I need to help me leverage these (people, technology, financing)?
• Do I know what success looks like on a monthly or quarterly basis, and how will I track progress against these goals?
• What are the main challenges and expenses that might stall my progress?
• If unforeseen challenges or expenses arise, how will I tackle them and do I have contingency plans and funds in place?

Planning strategies

If you’re looking for a more structured approach to planning, here a few tried and tested goal-setting methods used by business leaders to help keep them and their teams accountable.

SMART Goals

This strategy involves setting goals that are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

This method can be used by organisations of any size to help build a focussed roadmap by breaking down larger goals into smaller, achievable tasks and metrics. For example, setting a goal to increase sales by 15% within the next six months or selling 75% of excess stock by April both meet the criteria of being specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)

These are frameworks which help to align organisational targets with individual objectives through tracking of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for each team member. Whether you’re a sole trader or a CFO, they’re a proven method for measuring performance and keeping teams accountable for financial growth.

Objectives are qualitative goals that represent big picture wins for your business. For example, you may want to expand your business to a new market this year to drive revenue growth.

Key results represent specific, quantifiable milestones that can help you track your progress on the way there i.e. conduct market research in target country, open a business account in local currency, and find freelancers or hire team members to support launch.

BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goals)

This method, coined by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their book *Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies *outlines the need for long-term ‘stretch’ goals that will require months or even years to achieve.

These goals are 'bold, compelling and often focus on achieving something remarkable' for your business in the course of the next 5, 10 or 25 years. These goals are often aligned with the overall mission of the company, and work to unify team members around a common purpose. They’re built to be challenging and in terms of scale and where the company’s leaders would like to see the company evolve to.

Ideally, your BHAGs should align with your company’s core values and purpose, beyond just financial goals, for exmaple they could set out what impact you would like to have on your customer’s lives and the industry you operate in as a whole. For example, Wise’s mission is to make money without borders available to every person and business on the planet, by providing international payments that are fast, low-cost, convenient and transparent via our unique cross-border payments network. You can read more about our progress in our quarterly Mission update.

BHAGs focus on values, innovation and sustainable growth - whether that’s diversifying into new products or services to build your brand, opening new premises overseas or having a measurable social impact by giving money to chosen charities or operating a carbon-neutral business.

Streamline your finances

If your new year’s resolution is to get a better grasp of your business finances, there are a number of ways that budgeting and using new technologies can help you to optimise processes, reduce unnecessary costs and manage your resources more effectively.

Develop a clear budget and track expenses

If last year ended in a rush to finalise accounts for tax returns or a pile of unpaid invoices, you’ll be familiar with how important it is to track incoming and outgoing expenses.

To create a clear budget, many businesses operate on a quarterly basis, establishing estimated income, fixed expenses (such as salaries, rent and utilities bills) variable expenses and separate pots for different teams, departments or projects.

With Wise it's easy to track expenses with our multi-currency debit card,with real-time transaction notifications, personalised spend limits and Groups, which allows you to set aside a budget for a particular team or project and track individual team members' spending.

It’s important to be able to track spending against your overall budget, allowing you to identify areas for improvement or further investment, as well as any opportunities to cut costs. For example if you operate a retail or wholesale business, understanding how much your warehousing or shipping costs are contributing to overheads and reviewing the market for more competitive options would be be a great place to start your financial planning.

For more advice on planning for financial success, see our How to Guide on Budgeting for small to medium sized businesses.

Use technology to track progress

Business of all sizes can now benefit from accounting software to help them automate record-keeping, manage invoices and keep track of cashflow. There are plenty of solutions available for your business with many designed to connect with your business account for streamlined accounting.

If you’re looking for compatible account providers, the Wise Business account integrates with leading account software providers including Quickbooks, Xero, FreeAgent, Sage Oracle NetSuite and QuickFile, so you can record transactions in Wise and reconcile accounts quickly and easily.

Having 360 visibility of your financial data and overall accounts can help to make tax returns and financial statements less stressful, while visualisation of data on dashboards can make for better decision making.

Larger businesses

For more established businesses, if one of your goals for this year is to improve your cashflow and liquidity position, enterprise accounting software offers numerous advantages, from improved financial reporting to optimised treasury solutions. This is especially important if you operate in multiple jurisdictions and need a clear picture of your financial position in each country.

Wise supports global businesses to manage treasury and convert in 40+ currencies, enabling them to manage FX costs with low fees and transparent pricing as well as more automated processes. If you’re interested in learning more about Wise’s API solutions, you can speak to our Account Management team.

Go for growth

Finally, if growth is in your plans for the coming year, it’s important to remember that it can come in many different forms besides healthier profits. It can also look like growing your team, changing up your product offering or widening your pool of freelancers or expanding your operations to new markets.

Expanding your business overseas

In a digital world expanding into new markets overseas can offer huge benefits for your business, by expanding your customer base and allowing you to tap into demand for your products and services.

Often, businesses consider international expansion to be fraught with challenges, from financial and administrative hurdles to cultural and linguistic barriers. But these days it’s more simple than ever before - and it’s possible to start selling goods and services to international customers without ever setting foot in the country.

For example, Wise’s Business account allows you to open account details in 8+ currencies including USD, EUR, CAD and GBP, which allows you to share account details with your customers and get paid like local, without the need to set up a local bank account.

In addition, if your international expansion involves paying suppliers, freelancers or investors in other countries, Wise’s multi-currency account allows you to hold and send in 40+ currencies to 160+ countries around the world with low fees and transparent pricing.

Building your team

If your growth plans involve hiring new team members overseas, it’s vitally important that they receive their money fast, reliably and in the currency that works best for them. With Wise you can send up to 1000 payments in one transaction in multiple currencies, automating your payroll and simplifying cashflow.

If you’re considering a move into new markets in the new year, check out our series of guides designed to help you build your business across borders.

Open a balance with Wise Business