Small business owners and operators face a wide range of different issues and problems from raising enough capital to operate, retaining customers in a competitive environment and marketing correctly. However, one of the biggest challenges a small business will face is trying to scale.
Scaling your company means being able to handle a large increase in demand or production. If you cannot scale up your operations efficiently and affordably when the time for growth comes, you will have a hard time being successful. With that in mind, this article is going to look at a few important tips to make sure your small business can scale appropriately.
Don’t Take Shortcuts
As your business grows, there may be a temptation inside of you that wants to take some scaling shortcuts in order to reach your next goal a little bit more rapidly. While this might help in the short term, it can often hurt you in the long run. When shortcuts are made, business owners will often compromise when they don’t need to, as they have tunnel vision and are focusing on nothing but scaling quickly.
In particular, there are several different marketing shortcuts some companies will use when dealing with scale or explosive growth. These include single drafting, uninspired content, posting duplicate content and adopting new marketing methods without testing them first. Sure, using these shortcuts will save time and let you focus more on scaling, but your overall marketing success will suffer as a result. If you are interested in learning more about successfully marketing your small business, check out this link: https://blog.waveapps.com/small-business-marketing/
Scaling a business should be a careful process and it won’t happen overnight. If you give away a large portion of your company to scale a bit quicker or sacrifice things like safety, employee happiness or security to grow, those decisions could cost you a lot of time, energy and money in the future.
Get Your Employees Passionate and Excited About the Growth
Whether your team consists of you and a few friends or family members or dozens of staff members, your employees can make or break the success and viability of your company. This is especially true as many will be busier and have more to do when your company scaling.
If there is no passion or excitement among your staff about your growth, scaling could prove to be very difficult. Also, happy or excited employees are 20% more productive, which can only help you when you’re scaling. As a result, you should be sure to explain to employees how our company scaling will benefit them and why they should be excited about it.
If your employees are just working for a pay check and don’t really care about the direction or success of the company, they likely won’t be all that productive for you and this could drastically slow down the scaling process for your business.
Make Customer Service a Priority
No matter how buttoned up your team and operations are, scaling your business (especially rapidly) is sure to produce a few hiccups. It could be something such as a missed email or call, to something like a longer delivery or production time. As a result, you need your customer service game to be on point during this transitional period.
70% of customers will pay more to deal with a business that exhibits good customer service practices, so it is well worth it to train your employees well when it comes to customer service. You should, of course, be very quick to answer any questions or concerns, but can also be proactive in your customer service approach. Social media is a fantastic tool to reach out to your customers and ask them questions about their experiences with your company, ways you could improve and more.
So, good luck and implement these tips as you scale up your business!