Is your company a growing business and do you want to strike the right balance for sustained growth? Here are five tips you can use for scaling your company that will keep you from making the mistakes that have stopped 70 percent of companies on the fast track to growth.
Scaling your company
Congratulations, your small business has arrived at the point where it is absorbing all your time. Your days (and nights) pass in a never-ending stream of tasks and responsibilities. You’ve had to turn down customers because you don’t have the time or resources to service them.
[quotesright]Statistics show that only out of every 10 businesses make it beyond their initial growth spurt. [/quotesright]
Why is that? Many of these fail because of a faulty understanding of what growth really is. Working harder is not the key to success in this century. Effectively scaling your company is.
[quotes]Trying to do it all yourself is no answer.[/quotes] In fact, research proves that multi-tasking is a bad idea. You need to learn to do things differently and smarter to grow.
Before your head explodes or your business becomes a sad statistic, see how these five ways of scaling your company can help your business thrive.
1. PLAN TO SUCCEED
Now is the time to take a close look at yourself. Haul out all those initial hopes and dreams and scrutinize them closely.
It is pointless to imagine yourself as the next Bill Gates, but just as pointless to sell yourself short. Your mind is a powerful force when it has a clear vision of what it is trying to accomplish. One of the best ways to do that is to envision what your ideal state will be when achieved. [quotesright]Get granular, make it real. It’s your vision, your quest. [/quotesright]
Be Aware of Your Limitations
Make a checklist of your limitations and have a good look at them. Figure out what you’re good at and what aspects of your business you enjoy doing. Don’t do anything else. Besides hiring people to do a job, in today’s age of apps and outsourcing, [quotes]there is no need to become a jack-of-all-trades to run a business.[/quotes]
Look into delegating or outsourcing the aspects that you hate or suck at. Otherwise, you can never grow because you are caught in one of the founder’s traps where your grasp exceeds your ability to control or do well. You’ll flail about, be frustrated and have no time for yourself, your family, or fun.
If your business is performing consistently, you can reasonably predict what your figures will be in the next five or 10 years. If you have a proven business model and your product is in high demand, then there is no reason why you can’t take your company to the next level.
When this is the case, it’s time to think how you can turn your $3 million annual turnover into $30 or even $50 million business. Here’s how it’s done…
Keep it Lean
The next stage requires a formal sales model, a sales team to implement it, and processes to keep everything under control. While you certainly want to increase sales, you don’t want to increase your marketing costs at the same rate.
Search for aspects of your business model that can be replicated quickly at little cost. To support scaling your company, your next sale cannot cost as much in time and effort as the previous one.
For example, software companies are the poster kids of scaling. While billions are spent on developing new programs, there is a comparatively low cost involved in getting them out there. That’s how you end up being Bill Gates – by means of lean growth.
Growth without scaling your company is not profitable.
You Will Need Financing to Grow
Don’t stop reading, [quotesright]you aren’t going to do this bit alone. [/quotesright]
To go from $5 million to $50 million you will need financial help, whether it’s for office space, employees, or a larger factory. Before you know it, your bustling business will have repaid that loan a thousand times over, thanks to scaling.
Find a financial guru to help you with all the nitty-gritty involved in convincing a financier or a couple of investors that you are “the one.” If your business model and financial predictions are sound, that should be no problem.
[quotes]There is a lot more to getting financing than money.[/quotes] Investors will look beyond the numbers to see how solid the framework of the company is. They will look for documented process, procedures, leadership, management structure, a clear strategy, and much more. They can lose real money, you only lose opportunity. That’s why you have to have your company buttoned down and run like a company that can grow before you seek financing. Money is the grease, it’s not the wheels that make the vehicle move faster. For this, you need a business coach.
Let your coach help you to do the math regarding how much you need and what kind of repayment plan you can commit to.
2. SHIFT OVER
From this point, focus only on scaling your company. Spend your valuable time considering opportunities to make your operations easier and more cost effective.
You should be managing the prosperity of your company, not answering the phone. As business coaches, we call that being an employee, not an owner. [quotes]An owner works ON their business at a strategic level, not at the employee level.[/quotes]
As tempting as it is to stay involved every detail of your small business, it is time to let go. You need to make the mental shift that allows you to delegate responsibilities to other competent people.
By all means, keep a beady eye on proceedings and remain the face of your company, but get used to the idea of leaving the legwork to your employees.
Josh Lowry - SVP of Global Sales and Marketing at Raygun, puts it simply, “Operating the business at scale is about optimization, not duplication, of efforts.”
3. LET TECHNOLOGY WORK FOR YOU
Let’s face it, you’re an entrepreneur, not a techie, and [quotesright]you are going to need some serious technological firepower to succeed at the next level. [/quotesright]
Once you have your employees in place, make use of resources such as Slack, Trello, and Basecamp to keep open channels of communication. Set goals, stay in touch and stay on track using the technology at your disposal.
First on your list should be getting in touch with a great technical services provider to implement services to assist you on your road to greatness. You’ll need tools for accounting, marketing automation, sales management, customer service, and more.
Scaling and Automation Go Hand-in-Hand
We have the technology, people! There are thousands of technology solutions available, ready to use to help you scale your business.
[quotesright]Automate everything you can. [/quotesright] If it can be done online, do it that way. The Cloud is your best friend for accessing anything, anywhere.
For financial management, there’s Quick Books Online and a host of more sophisticated and complex accounting programs. CRM tools are a must to keep track of customers’ particulars, orders, leads, and invoicing. They are also great for email campaigns and market research. Batchbook and Nimble will even help you keep track of clients’ birthdays and other information to add a personal touch to your communications.
Automate bookings and orders. Online bookings eliminate human error and assist with planning.
[quotes]The age of the internet is on us – use it or lose out.[/quotes]
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Think big and take bold action!
The smart ones hire a professional business coach and trainer because they have worked with owners to take their scalable companies on to great success and realize their vision more reliably and faster than they ever might otherwise.
We are experts using a process developed by leading business and personal development experts like Brian Tracy. During our long careers, we have grown people, teams, and businesses into successful executives, business owners, and organizations. We’ve been in your shoes.
Learn how to get the help you need to scale. It might be the best move you ever make. Of course, there is no obligation, the decision is yours. We know we’re not right for everyone. Let’s start a conversation: USA: 877.433.6225 feedback@focalpointcoaching.com
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4. GET HELP
Hiring employees is a touchy subject. It’s so hard to find good help. In reality, it’s just hard to let go of the reins.
[quotes]You must get assistance if your business is to succeed.[/quotes] This doesn’t mean hiring the first, or even the tenth person you interview.
Interview Carefully
The well-known and respected business development expert, Brian Tracy, says, [quotesright] “If you hire in haste, you’ll repent at leisure.” [/quotesright] In other words, hire only after several interviews. You’ll likely have many applicants for a position so how do you pick the best? In addition to Brian’s advice to interview people more than once so you can compare people, let your team interview them too. Get their opinion. After all, they’ll have to work with the person and they’ll pick up things you might not.
Use Assessments
[quotes]You don’t have to “hire blind”[/quotes] because there are proven personnel assessments that give you greater insights into a person’s skills, motivating factors, communications style, and more, plus many jobs have specific profiles that work best in them, in so many words making sure you aren’t hiring a square peg for a round hole.
If you want employee loyalty and commitment in the long term, the interview is where you need to do your work. There is simply no substitute for interviewing more than once. You’ll see different people emerge over several interviews than the one you first saw!
Apply the principles of scaling your company here too. Hire someone who will be an asset to your business. Someone who can work faster and more efficiently than you can, unsupervised. Employ someone who will decrease the cost of getting your product out there.
Tips:
Keep Your People Motivated
Once you have assembled your A-team of employees, you need to keep them bringing their A-game to work every day.
A study by Harvard Business School suggests 5 things that employees expect from their bosses:
Motivated people can help you achieve your goals for scaling your company in record time.
[quotesright]We hate to tell you, you need to change and adapt and increasingly become a leader[/quotesright]. It’s a new set of skills you must learn.
Get Them on Board
By setting clear, measurable goals for each employee you create a sense of ownership towards your long-term aims. Don’t neglect training as a tool for keeping your employees up-to-date and ahead of the pack either.
[quotesright]But setting goals is not all of the equation. You need to know how to delegate[/quotesright] in a way that ensures you get the results you expect. There are 10 specific things you must do to delegate or watch the delegation fail. It’s one of the things we teach as business coaches and trainers to our clients. You need to learn new and smarter ways to manage to scale. This is just one of hundreds.
Promote employees who thrive, and give them greater responsibilities. That way you free up even more of your time.
5. BUILD A PUBLIC PROFILE AND GET OUT OF YOUR OFFICE
Now the focus comes back to you.
You have got all your systems for scaling your company in place and everything running like clockwork. [quotesright]Now it’s up to you to push your business to a level which goes beyond operational success. [/quotesright]
Networking is a vital tool in the world of business. Everybody knows who the faces are behind Apple and Microsoft, don’t they?
Set up and maintain a strong public profile. Make sure you foster bonds with the right people in your community and business network.
As the leader of your company, you need to be a visible entity to your clients. Other people, such as investors, strategic partners, and your customers need to know who you are and what you stand for. Be there physically as well as virtually, the people who you get to know personally at events, networking groups, charities, and associations can be a powerful source of growth through recommendations.
EY, formerly Ernst & Young and on the Forbes America’s Best Employers List, claims that critical relationships are a “catalyst” for your company’s success.
[quotes]In business, it’s WHO you know.[/quotes]
Carefully considered and properly implemented, scaling your company at the right time can turn your company into a lean, mean profit-making machine.