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| Photo Courtesy: Luigi Diamanti,FreeDigitalPhoto.net |
It is a very tough act to get off the starting block and build a successful small business having good revenue and great profit. You have a great value proposition in your product/service offering and you are able to generate revenue with relative ease. The going has been good for the first couple of years, and then you hit a revenue ceiling. Your revenue growth that was exponential has become linear and is now crawling. You are working harder than before, all resources in the firm are fully engaged, you have added more people and have also increased your marketing budgets – but you are just not getting the big bang growth that you are looking for. You can see that the market is growing, there are many small players entering your market space and some of whom are beginning to show signs of being your serious competition. What seemed like an open and clear market made just for you is getting crowded. You may still be one of the larger players in the market but you don’t seem to get big enough!
This is the phantom Ceiling effect that many small firms hit when they want to make the transition from being small to becoming big. It seems as if you are running on a tread-mill, running faster and faster, yet you are still there. This is called the phantom ceiling, because it is really not there, the ceiling is made of ether and you can actually break through.
If you look carefully, the potential market may be attracting many opportunistic players, over time they could hit the phantom ceiling too. In the process of market consolidation, a few will break through and dominate the market and many will fade away slowly or quickly depending up on how they act out their business models. If you are going to be the one to lead your market then you must act now.
The occurrence of the phantom ceiling is a good sign provided that you can recognize it early. It is a sure sign that you are in the right market poised for growth, and that you are among the early strong players in the market place.
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