HOW TO SCALE A BUSINESS

January 31st 2020 at 7:28pm Published by firstdownadmin

Scalability is about capacity and capability. Scaling a business means setting the stage to enable and support growth in your company. It means having the ability to grow without being hampered. It requires planning, some funding and the right systems, staff, processes, technology and partners.

Does your business have the capacity to grow? Will your business systems, infrastructure and team be able to accommodate growth?

Companies scale their business when their revenue increases while their operating costs remain low. If a company increases their revenue but increases their costs at the same rate, then that business is not scaling.

Setting proper goals is necessary for anyone who’s serious about scaling their business, making more money, producing more product or achieving any other dream.

By creating a plan, taking action and staying persistent no matter what, you can leverage the following strategies and methods to scale your business. It’s not easy. No one ever said it would be. But it is well worth it.

Evaluate and Plan

Take a hard look inside your business to see if you are ready for growth. You can’t know what to do differently unless you take stock of where your business stands today.

Strategize what you need to do to increase sales. Then assume your orders doubled or tripled overnight. Does your organization have the people and systems to handle those new orders, without failing or getting a big black eye? This is where a good plan is essential.

Find the Money

Scaling a business doesn’t come free. Your growth plan may call for hiring staff, deploying new technology, adding equipment and facilities, and creating reporting systems to measure and manage results.

Secure the Sales

Scaling your business obviously assumes you will sell more. Do you have the sales structure in place to generate more sales? Look at sales from end to end. Do you have:

A sufficient lead flow to generate the desired number of leads?
Marketing systems to track and manage leads?
Enough sales representatives to follow up and close leads?
A robust system to manage sales orders?
A billing system and a receivables function to follow up to ensure invoices are collected timely?

Invest in Technology

Technology makes it easier and less expensive to scale a business. You can gain huge economies of scale and more throughput, with less labor, if you invest wisely in technology.

Automation can help you run your business at lower cost and more efficiently by minimizing manual work.
Systems integration is a prime area for improvement in most businesses. Companies today don’t run off of a single system — they may have a dozen or more systems. If those systems don’t work together, they create silos, which in turn multiply communication and management problems as your company grows.

Find Staff or Strategically Outsource

Last but certainly not least, are the hands needed to carry out the work. Technology gives huge leverage, but at the end of the day you still need people.