Keep Your Eyes on the Horizon

Imagine you’re on a long road trip. You’ve planned your destination, picked your route, and you’re cruising along nicely. But as every good driver knows, if you spend too much time staring at the dashboard or fiddling with the radio, you’re going to miss what’s ahead. Step 6 is your reminder to keep your eyes on the horizon, to spot what’s coming, understand the road you’re on, and be ready to take the best turns when they appear.

In business terms, that means understanding your market, truly knowing your customers, and recognising new opportunities before your competitors do.

Opportunities Are Hiding in Plain Sight

Growth doesn’t always mean changing direction or launching something brand new. Often, the best opportunities are right in front of you. But they can be easy to miss if you’re caught up in the day-to-day running of the business.

A simple market audit can help you:

• Understand where your revenue is coming from
• Spot underperforming areas or rising stars
• Identify which customer segments are driving your success

What Is It That You Do Again?

It sounds obvious, but taking time to clarify what you actually do, and for whom, is powerful.

Start with the basics:

• What products or services do you offer?
• Which sectors or customer groups do you serve?
• What’s your current business mix by revenue and margin?

Create a simple matrix if needed. It doesn’t need to be fancy. Just map out your offerings, markets, and income streams. You’ll often find that your most profitable opportunities aren’t where you thought they were.

Know Your Market

Understanding your market means more than knowing it exists. You need to dig into its size, trends, and your current slice of the pie:

• Is your market growing, steady, or declining?
• What share do you currently hold?
• Are there gaps your competitors haven’t filled?
• Could you offer more to your existing customers?

This isn’t about compiling a 50-page report. It‘s about asking the right questions and being curious about what’s happening around you.

10 Things You Should Know About Your Customers

Understand your customers, customer types, and supply chain. A list of customers is great to have, but do you really understand them and their relationship with you? Think about:

1. Who they are – Age, sector, size, demographics.
2. What they do – What are their goals or business activities?
3. Why they buy – What problem do you solve for them?
4. When they buy – Are there seasonal trends or buying cycles?
5. How they buy – Online? Face-to-face? Through reps?
6. What they can afford – Are your prices aligned with their budget?
7. What makes them feel good about buying – Is it your service, speed, value, or something else?
8. What they expect from you – Reliability, innovation, communication?
9. What they think about you – Have you asked them lately?
10. What they think about your competitors? Why might they choose someone else?

Understanding your customers in this way means you can serve them better, find more like them, and potentially offer them more.

Understand Your Place in the Supply Chain

Just like on a road trip, you’re not the only vehicle out there. Your supply chain plays a huge part in your business journey. Ask:

• Who are your key suppliers?
• Why do you buy from them?
• Are there risks in relying on them?
• Do you understand where you sit in the broader value chain?

Markets evolve, and supply chains shift. If you don’t know where you fit—or if you’re over-reliant on one supplier—you’re leaving yourself vulnerable to unexpected detours.

Final Thoughts

Keeping your eyes on the horizon means regularly lifting your head up from the daily grind to ask: What’s next? Where can we go from here? What are we missing?

The best opportunities often come from what you already know—but haven’t yet fully explored.

This post is part 6 of the Business Owners Handbook, a 10-part blog series designed to guide SME business owners through the essential steps for sustainable growth and success.

Ready for the next step in your journey? Explore all 10 Steps and start building a business with purpose, direction, and real momentum.