How Do I Scale Up My Company?

How Do I Scale Up My Company?

Key Ingredients For Sustainably Scaling Your Business

Starting a business is hard, but scaling up a company can be even more difficult. As your business grows, you need to be able to meet the demands of customers without compromising on quality or running your team into the ground.

If you’re ready to scale up your company, here are our key ingredients to success. 

The importance of having a “scale up plan”

We talk about the importance of planning a lot here at Intelligent Office. It’s a vital step for many parts of your business; everything from training employees to introducing new products and services requires careful planning.

This is particularly important if your business is relatively new or if it’s been growing slowly. Companies that don’t plan for the increased business that comes from scaling up are often left scrambling to fulfill the promises they’ve made to their customers. You’ll need to think about:

  • Your current sales data.
  • An ideal sales growth forecast, complete with details about the revenue you wish to generate.
  • How you’ll handle increased sales, more prospect phone calls, and other factors that come with growth. For starters, will you need more employees or resources?
  • How much it will cost to acquire new technology, people, software, and other tools as business increases.
  • Whether your company is truly ready for growth.

You’ll never be able to predict these things with 100% accuracy, but understanding each of these pieces will allow you to create a reasonable plan for scaling your business.

Create internal systems to automate as much as possible

Setting up systems to automate as much as possible will save you time and money in the long run… and you’ll need both while scaling up. Aim to create systems for things you do often, such as:

  • Training processes for new hires.
  • Marketing automation.
  • Accounting-based tasks, like generating regular invoices and payroll.

This is also a great time to generate workflows, which reduce redundancy and streamline commonly performed tasks.

Strategic hiring and outsourcing is key

As your business grows, you’ll need to hire new employees or outsource. Delegating responsibilities can be a tricky task for small business owners and entrepreneurs, but you’ll have to become comfortable with the process if you want to scale up.

In terms of outsourcing, customer service can be a great place to start. You don’t have to outsource overseas, either. In this day and age, it’s easy to find a local company with competent virtual assistants who will get to know your company and your customers.

Scaling a business requires flexibility

When scaling a business, it’s imperative that you can pivot as needed. What will you do if a record-setting month of sales is followed by a sales slump, for example?

The ability to be flexible doesn’t happen in a vacuum, which is why you need to remember the important points we’ve discussed today. Flexibility will come naturally once you have a scale up plan, robust internal systems, and a team you can count on.