How to Scale a Successful Business

Most business owners started their business a similar way.  They were gifted at something and spun that into a business.  In the beginning, you find that there are many more moving pieces to creating a successful business. Yes, there is absolutely your core product or services but additionally there is accounting, human resources, marketing, sales, the list seems to go on and on.

At some point in time, you will have a decision to make are you creating a job for yourself, a small lifestyle business, or do you want to grow?  If you want to grow there are a few steps you will need to take to be able to scale your business.

Strategic Planning

The first step is going to be to do a real deep dive into your organization.  You will need to create strong processes for every functional area across your organization.  Identify areas that are not working particularly well and addressing those issues before you attempt to grow.  What steps will you take to increase your revenue.  What does your sales projection look like over the next 18 months? Do you have the ability to service that growth?  The last thing you want to do is to sink your company but many organizations have done just that in their push to grow.

Get Smart   

In order to scale your business, you will need to look at technology in a different way.  One of the best things that you can do is to work with a third-party IT management as it relates to your technology and security.  There are many ways that technology can change the direction of your business Automation.  When you look at repetitive tasks that are manually performed over and over that is a prime target for automation.  You can lower your labor costs or have those resources working on higher value activities.  How many different systems are being used?  What if you created a way for these systems to integrate with one another?  Now, we are talking about elevating your business to a different level.

Instead of hobbling along on end-of-life equipment invest in the future of your company.  Create a 3-year technology plan for hardware, phones, servers, software, automation and you will be ahead of the curve as far as your infrastructure goes and on your way to being an industry leader.

Cash is King

Do you have a robust sales plan?  We cannot grow our businesses without the revenue.  Once you have created a strong foundation for your growth it is time to step on the gas.  Consider the best marketing strategies to increase the lead flow into your company.  Making sure you have a strong sales team in place to be able to close those deals when they come in.  Back to the technology piece, make sure you have integrated a solid CRM into your company to be able to track all these moving parts.  Additionally, you want your IT management team to have real time view of the pipeline across all sales reps.  Finally, accounting and receivable processes can make or break a company.  Utilizing technology to automate payment systems and a process to ensure that all invoices are collected on in short order.