7 Factors In a Successful Business Scale Up

If you want to scale up your business for success, start by asking yourself some questions about your company’s capability and its capacity to deal with growth. This is a time for honest reflection and getting a clear perspective on your current position.

As an entrepreneur this may be challenging as you are close to your business and may lack the perspective to assess the situation clearly. If this is the case, you may consider turning to a trusted professional, like a CFO, a business mentor or coach who can give you objective advice.

Before we dive into the 7 factors for a successful business scale up, here are 2 questions entrepreneurs should ask themselves before considering scaling:

1. Is your company capable of growing? Can you and your employees deal with additional work or sales cost-effectively? What happens if your company achieves exponential growth – will your costs rise exponentially as a result?
2. Does your company have the capacity to deal with growth? Can your systems, employees, and infrastructure scale up quickly to meet demand – for instance, from a sudden surge in orders. Will you be still able to manufacture or deliver on time?

As you scale up your business, it’s important that quality and performance stay the same. You’ve built a reputation for delivering to a high standard and you don’t want to lose that by scaling up without robust plans in place. You also don’t want to run out of money because your rapid growth affects your cash flow.

Once you’ve finished your review, you are going to need careful planning and some funding to scale your business. You’ll also need to have the right systems, processes, technology, staff, finance, and even partners in place.

If this all sounds a bit daunting, don’t worry! Our CFOs have shared their incredible wealth of knowledge and experience to provide you with the 7 factors important for all effective business scale-ups.

1. Identify the gaps in your processes

You need to audit your business processes (core, support, and management) to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Find the gaps and address them before you start to scale up. Keep it simple, remember that complex processes slow things down and hinder progress.

2. How will you boost sales when you scale up?

What does your company need to do to increase sales and meet your scale up goals? Take time to 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?

If you don’t have enough staff to cope with an increase in sales, consider hiring more employees, outsourcing tasks, or finding partners that may be able to handle functions more efficiently than your company.

3. Forecast scaling up costs as accurately as possible

Once you’ve completed the sales growth forecast, you should create an expense forecast. This should include the new technology, employees, infrastructure, and systems you’ll need to be ready to handle the new sales orders. The more detailed your cost estimates, the more realistic your plan will be.

4. Get funding to cover your business expansion

If you need to hire more staff, install new technology, add facilities or equipment, and create new reporting systems, you’ll need money to invest. If you don’t have enough reserves to do this then you need to find money another way. Check out our helpful article if you aren’t sure how to fund your company’s growth.

5. 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 exceptional customer service every time you interact with them. Don’t let scaling up reduce your quality.

6. Invest in the right technology

As you scale up, you and your team will find that manual tasks become overwhelming. For example, if you leap from processing 5 website sales each day to 5 per hour, your employees will quickly get overwhelmed. Be ready to invest in technology that will automate tasks and allow enough time to find the technology, migrate from your old system and train your team. In the end, all businesses depend on automation to bring costs down and make production more efficient.

Another important point in this area is integrating technology. You can have the best systems in the world, but your business will struggle to thrive if they aren’t integrated. You need robust, scalable systems that work smoothly together.

7. Successful scale-up is hard – ask for help

Don’t be afraid to ask for help from experts who have experience in scaling up companies. As 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.”

You can ask top entrepreneur for help, turn to a trusted mentor, or recruit a part-time CFO to sit beside you. Whatever you choose, you will need a supportive, non-judgmental partner. A person who will help you develop a progressive, scale up strategy that delivers the right numbers so your business can grow and fulfil your aspirations.

Investing in the preparation stage is the key to success – when you get this right, you can scale up rapidly and meet your business goals. Just take care that you don’t get so caught up in the business that you lose sight of your personal goals. Our clients say they really value the way their CFO helps them to balance what’s important to feel accomplished both in their work and as people.

De-risk your scale-up with a highly skilled, experienced CFO. The first step is easy. Just book a no-obligation, 30-minute discovery call by dialling 0800 169 1499 or completing our contact form. Our in-house team is here to help get your business scale up journey underway.