Whether you own an online business or a brick-and-mortar business, the competition is thick, and it’s getting harder and harder for entrepreneurs to distinguish themselves from their competitors. That reason alone is why it’s so important you do everything you can to stand out and grow.
Growth is the ultimate goal of most entrepreneurs, right? You start out small and then scale into a mega empire… Well, that idea sounds good, but the reality behind scaling your business is that it’s nowhere near that simple.
Scaling your business is indeed about getting “bigger,” per se, but the truth behind scaling your business can be answered in two questions:
Does your business have the appropriate range or enough capacity to grow?
Will your business structure and systems be able to accommodate growth?
You have to answer these questions because if there’s any type of slip, miscommunication, or mistake made, it can lead to a fast downward spiral of your business. When starting out small, writing data on pen and paper, and even basic excel docs and templates may have worked just fine for the level of business you were operating under. But now that you’ve made the decision to scale, you have to make strategic moves to support growth without causing disruption.
Follow these tips.
Assess Your Business and Devise a Growth Plan
In order for your business to grow, you need to do a thorough assessment of it to see where it is today to determine if it’s even ready for scaling. This is going to let you know what you need to do differently in executing your growth goals.
Look at what your numbers are in sales and compare it to what you want those numbers to be. In doing that, you would then need to look at whether or not you have the staff to produce the number of products you need to reach your sales goal. Do you have the technology and software to reach these goals?
Devise a sales forecast and break it down into monthly goals, customer acquisition, and total orders. This will give you more of a realistic goal and execution plan to know what you need to do to reach these goals.
Secure Funding
As you know, it takes money to make money, and when scaling a business, it’s not going to come cheap. In your growth plan, it may require hiring more staff, investing in more production equipment, buying triple the supplies, and investing in more top-level technologies. All of this will increase your expenses drastically, but it will also streamline your processes.
Do your research to check the numbers of what your upfront expenses grow. This will give you a more accurate idea of a specific number to give when applying for grants, business loans, or business lines of credit.
Streamline Your Processes
When it comes to “streamlining,” what we’re really talking about is investing in technology. Scaling your business is going to be expensive as it is on the front end, but investing in the right technology is going to make running your business much easier and more efficient, plus it will save you money on the back end with less labor.
JDE Software is a great all-in-one program designed to meet the challenges of a growing business. From inventory control and financial management to CRM and sales, this program is a one-stop shop to help your day-to-day operations run smoothly and efficiently.
Outsource Qualified Help
You may have built your business from the ground up by yourself but as your business grows, you’re not going to be able to do it all by yourself. In the beginning, you may have been fine wearing the hat of receptionist, inventory manager, and customer service rep, but now that your business is growing, your focus needs to be on the operations of the business.
You want to outsource help for the areas your inexperienced in or simply don’t have the time to do. For example, If you’ve barely gotten by handing the accounting on your own, now is the perfect time to hire an accountant to do that for you. Even better, with your investment in new technologies and other types of equipment, it would be in your best interest to invest in a virtual phone answering service if you can’t hire a full-time receptionist to handle your business inquiries.
There are a lot of moving parts when making the decision to scale your business. Devising a growth plan is going to be the most important part of all, as it will allow for everything else to fall in place. By following these tips, you’ll be well on your way to scaling your business in no time.
