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Scaling your business depends on two factors: your company’s capability and its capacity to deal with growth.
To scale up your business, your company must be capable of dealing with a growing amount of work or sales and of doing it cost-effectively.
You need to know that your company can achieve exponential growth without costs rising as a result. It’s vital too, that performance doesn’t suffer as your company scales up.
You also need to be sure that your business systems, employees, and infrastructure can accommodate growth. For instance, if you get a sudden surge in orders, will your company be able to cope? Will you be still able to manufacture and deliver products or services on time? Do you have enough employees to deal with a surge in work or sales?
Scaling a business requires careful planning and some funding. To be successful, you’ll need to have the right systems, processes, technology, staff, finance, and even partners in place.
Identify process gaps
Audit your business processes (core processes, support processes, and management processes) to find their strengths and weaknesses. Find the process gaps and address them before you start to scale up.
Keep the processes simple and straightforward. Complex processes slow things down and hinder progress.
Boost sales
Decide what your company needs to do to increase sales. How many new customers will you need to meet your scaled-up goals?
Create a sales growth forecast that details the number of new clients you need, the orders, and the revenue you want to generate.
Examine your existing sales structure and decide if it can generate more sales. Can you increase your flow of leads? Do you need to offer different products or services? Is there an untapped market? Do you have a marketing system to track and manage leads? Is your sales team capable of following up and closing more leads?
Make sure you have enough staff to cope with an increase in sales. If you don’t have enough staff, consider hiring new employees, outsourcing tasks, or finding partners that may be able to handle functions more efficiently than your company.
Forecast costs
Once you’ve done the sales growth forecast, create an expense forecast that includes the new technology, employees, infrastructure and systems you’ll need to be able to handle the new sales orders. The more detailed your cost estimates, the more realistic your plan will be.
Get funding
If you need to hire more staff, install new technology, add facilities or equipment, and create new reporting systems, you’ll need funds. Consider how you will fund the company’s growth.
Make delighting customers a priority
To reach your sales forecasts, your company will need loyal customers. You’ll win their loyalty by delivering outstanding products or services and customer service every time you interact with them.
Invest in technology
Invest in technology that will automate tasks. Automation will bring costs down and make production more efficient.
Ensure that your systems are integrated and work smoothly together.
Ask for help
Don’t be afraid to ask for help from experts who have experience in scaling up companies. In an interview, Apple’s co-founder, Steve Jobs, said, “I’ve never found anybody who didn’t want to help me when I’ve asked them for help.
“I’ve never found anyone who’s said no or hung up the phone when I called – I just asked.
“Most people never pick up the phone and call; most people never ask. And that’s what separates, sometimes, the people that do things from the people that just dream about them. You gotta act. And you’ve gotta be willing to fail; you gotta be ready to crash and burn, with people on the phone, with starting a company, with whatever. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”
