When you start your own business, you might not be thinking of the future in terms of scaling that business to make it grow and thrive. In reality, right at the start, you are probably more inclined simply to think about getting through the next day or week or month, growing slowly but surely and finding new clients and customers.
Yes, to be truly successful in business you need to introduce scaling at some point. It might be many years down the line, but there will come a point when you can’t grow any more just by yourself, and you need to take the next step, assuming you want to continue growing. If that is the case, there here are some tips on how to scale your business to create more profits, and become a huge success.
Make A Plan
Simply saying that you want to scale your business isn’t enough. It’s a start, however. To really scale up, you need to have a plan of how you are going to do it, with specific aims and goals and targets that you need to meet before you can take the next step.
This plan is not dissimilar to your business plan, although whereas that is an overview of the entire business and its finances and ultimate aims, your scaling plan can be more focused on certain aspects of the business, giving you the chance to break down the larger plan, making it easier and much less daunting.
When you write down your goals, they need to be realistic, specific, and measurable. Without these things in place it will be hard to achieve anything – you won’t know when you are going down the right path, just as you won’t know if you are actually heading in the wrong direction. Having a good, solid plan and sticking to it is crucial if you want to scale your business as not only will it point you in the right direction, it will stop you from moving too fast and rushing so that you launch when you aren’t ready to do so.
Manage Your Resources
Just because you are working hard on your plan and it might be specific to a certain part of the business, that doesn’t mean that the rest of your business can be ignored. You will still need to manage all of your resources, and ensure that everything is running smoothly. There is no point in focusing on one part of the business if the rest starts to unravel because no one is dealing with it.
There are a number of ways you can ensure that this happens:
- Delegate tasks to employees so that you can be sure that everything is going to be done. This may involve additional training to begin with, but once it is done, you can concentrate on other things, knowing the jobs you can no longer do are in hand. If you have no employees you may need to outsource to a third party. This will cost you money, but sometimes you need to spend money when it comes to scaling up.
- Invest in a CRM. A CRM (customer relationship management) tool is a way to keep all of your projects and tasks aligned so that nothing is missed. You will be able to input all data such as contract start and finish dates and any notes that are required about specific projects or customers. You can even keep track of your marketing materials through this system, and personalize it for your own business.
Invest In Your Employees
Employees are the lifeblood of your business, and without them you would have far too much to do to be successful and focused. Therefore, you need to invest in them if you want to achieve the growth you are striving for.
To start with, speak to your employees about what it is they need to be able to do their job more effectively. Not only will this make them feel valued within the business, which increases productivity and loyalty, but they are the best people to ask as they know exactly what it is that will make their jobs easier. Looking in from the outside won’t give you an answer. Once you know what they need, whether it is more time, additional training, improved tools and machinery, or anything else, you will need to invest in those things were possible to help them which in turn will help you.
Find Your Funding
When you want to scale your business, you are going to need to pay for it in most cases. Growth involves a cost, but you should look at it like an investment in your business because, with the right strategy in place, the money that you spend on scaling will be paid back to you – with interest – once you have completed your growth plan.
In the meantime, you need to know where the funding for your growth is coming from. You can look at speaking to your bank for a business loan, and ensuring that your business plan is up to date to show that you know where the money is going to be spent and how you will repay the loan. Another option is to self-fund your scaling. This can be the ideal option if you don’t want to run up any debts, or if your business credit and history won’t allow for borrowing. You can use your savings, investments in Canadian marijuana stocks, a personal loan or credit card, or you can borrow from family and friends. Whatever you choose, make sure that you have a plan to pay the money back to avoid coming into financial difficulties.
Keep Your Customers In Mind
It can become all too easy to focus so much on the mechanics and financing of growing your business that you forget about perhaps the most important aspect of all; your customers. If you don’t keep your customers in mind and ensure that they are happy with your business and the products and services you provide, then they will go elsewhere, and all the hard work you have put into scaling your business will be for nothing – if there are no customers, you won’t be able to sell anything, no matter how great it is or how much effort went into creating it.
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