If you’re a business of any size, chances are that you have a desire to see it grow, especially if you’re at the point where you’re too busy to handle the workload at your current size.
But scaling your business isn’t easy.
How To Know if your business is ready to go to the next level?
Before you even think about scaling, you need to analyze whether your business is ready to do so. Ask yourself these questions:
- Is demand for your product or service consistently high, with predictions showing that continuing far into the future?
- Are you profitable?
- Can you grow without significantly disrupting your current business?
If the answer is “yes” to all of these questions, you can then ask these follow-up questions:
- Am I turning down new clients because of insufficient staff, product, resources, or overhead?
- Am I consistently surpassing my revenue goals by more than 15% for multiple quarters?
- Does market research show support for future growth?
- Do you offer something that no one else does that will also stand the test of time, not just that’s popular in a current trend?
- Finally, do you have the energy, mental grit, and determination to help your business take a big step up?
If the answers to these questions are all a resounding “yes”, then here are a few tips to help you take your business to the next level.
6 Tips to Scaling Your Business:
- Do a Financial Evaluation
You’ve heard it plenty of times before: it takes money to make money. The first step in scaling should be to thoroughly evaluate your current financial situation and how much you need to grow in the way you want. Your plan should include over-estimating how much money you’ll need, so we recommend running a break-even analysis to start, which means determining how much of your product or service must be sold for you to break even on the fixed and variable costs of the increase in production of your growth. It’s very likely that you find you’ll need to grow much more than you currently think.
- Research Your Different Financing Options
Once you have the above number, it’s time to research your financing options. Some of your options include a business line of credit, equity investors or venture capital, or a term loan. Do thorough research to find which is suitable for you and your company.
- Automate or Outsource Where You Can
To save time and work, you’ll need to find ways to automate or outsource some of the difficult or time-consuming work on your plate. Where can you bring in software, freelancers, or outside experts to do so?
- Build a Bigger Team
To build a bigger business, you first need to build a bigger team. Figure out where the parts of your business are that will need a bigger team to handle the growth, and consider hiring internally for prominent management positions before looking outside.
- Time for a Bigger Marketing Campaign
To sustain higher growth, you need to up your marketing game. This means laying out your brand strategy and finding ways to increase your market share through content creation, brand loyalty, and brand recognition initiatives. Do a deep dive into your brand (audience, demographic, current content credibility, etc.), and then consider bringing in experts in social and digital marketing to bring your strategy into the 21st century and beyond.
It’s All About the PLAN
Once you have all of the above figured out or at least in the beginning stages of research, it’s time to start planning.
This is where so many businesses fail. You absolutely must start planning each stage of your scaling process in a detailed, diligent way. Take a look at your needs, your path to success, your competitors, and even for every potential failure and how to recover. This is truly the only way to succeed, and not doing so could cost you not only your growth plans but potentially the quality of your product or service or even your entire business.