The Effects Of Scaling Your Business
The difference between a start-up or a small business and a successful and profitable business lies on time and experience. There are many factors that play a big part in how those businesses became successful. These include things like focus, hard work, having the right people and timing.
Scaling your business can make or break it. If you scale up too quickly or recklessly, you’ll create organizational problems that will be difficult to undo. Also, premature scaling can cause your business to fail. On the flip side, scaling your business too slowly could cause you to miss out on important opportunities that come with greater revenue and more resources.
So, as you prepare to take the next phase of business development, these five steps will help you have a successful and profitable scale-up.
1. Determine If Your Business Is Scalable
You may have a killer product or service that serves a real need, but that doesn’t make it a cornerstone to scale up your business. Examine your offerings and determine if scaling up your business will mean that you’ll need an excessive level of resources and financing to make it happen. It’s better to stay a lean and successful business.
Not every business wants investors or is highly scalable. A majority of small businesses are family owned or managed directly by the owner and these can be successful, satisfying and profitable.
FREE Marketing Plan Generator
2. Keep Your Processes Simple
Successful business owners are good at keeping things simple. They take complex processes and make them simple. Apply this approach to everything, from your product launches to creating workflows.
Complexity wastes time because it needs more meetings, more communication with clients, more explanation, and more people in the workflow. It slows business and reduces growth. By reducing complexity, you’ll have a clear and well-communicated vision of your business’s goals. And, you’ll be able to lead employees towards that vision.
3. Focus on Making Customers Happy
Gaining new customers is an important part of any business, but you need to focus on your current customers. Client perception can make or break your business. So, if you offer quality products, services and experiences, and you keep your customers happy, then they’ll stick with you and remain loyal customers.
Making customers happy isn’t complicated and it’s one of the most important ways to grow your business. The most important things to focus on are to expect their needs, be with them when they make their first purchase and live up to the promises that you made about your product or service.
4. Invest in Your Employees
One of the challenges of growing a business is finding great employees and then keeping those people in your business. Businesses that invest money in their employees are successful because those people will stay with the business, they are loyal and will attract other talented people to the business. Making your employees feel valued will make them share your vision passionately and they’ll be motivated to grow your business.
5. Stay Tuned with Your Business
As your business grows, hiring smart and talented people should be one of your goals. This is because as the business owner you can’t do everything. It’s essential to delegate and let qualified employees or reliable outsourced talent handle the work. However, this doesn’t mean you tune out. Staying tuned with your business enables you to anticipate the need for change and adapt quickly when the time comes. Scaling a business takes time, so you need to know every loose stone and handhold to grow successfully.
Free Marketing Plan Generator
You’ll no doubt have heard the famous expression, “Failing to plan is planning to fail”. Without a clearly defined plan and set of goals, your business will drift aimlessly throughout the next year with no clear roadmap for where you’re heading. HubSpot’s marketing plan generator helps you outline your annual marketing strategy plan and identify top initiatives so you can start scaling your business with confidence. Simply fill in the blanks on this free strategic marketing plan template and you’ll receive a 12-month plan in less than 10 minutes.
