You first get started with your business. It can be such an exciting time. It might be something that you’ve always dreamt of doing or that you feel ready for. Either way, a lot of passion can come through. Then, when things start to go well, you realise that you’re ready to grow. This is when it can get scary. Maybe you’re not sure whether you can handle the growth or what you even need to do to make it happen. But this is where the idea of scaling comes in. Yet, before you can rush to scale, you need to make sure that the business is ready for it. Here are 10 things you need in place to make that happen.
1. A Business Plan
First of all, you need a business plan. Whether you started your business with a business plan in place or not, when you’re ready to scale, it’s important to have thought through every single part that goes into it . When you write a business plan, it gives you the opportunity to do that. You can focus on everything from the marketing you need to do to the financial side of things, as well as the action points that you need to follow to get to where you need to be.
2. Financing
Then, you need some financing. Not every business will need funds in order to grow, but it can be really useful. If you have significant plans to change the business or climb to higher heights, getting investors in can help. This is where your business plan comes in handy. You need to ensure that you have the financial side down so that you can pitch to Angel investors or VCs and get the money you need to be able to grow the business.
3. The Capacity to Scale
But at the same time, you need to make sure that you have the capacity to scale. If your business isn’t in the right place to be able to grow from where it’s at, change needs to happen. You need to make sure that you’re bringing in the right tools and systems for this to happen. If you don’t have the capacity to do it at the moment, finding the right data center to support you is key. With this in place, you can then handle the growth as it comes.
4. Existing Custom
With that in mind, you also need to ensure that you have existing custom. Choosing when to scale isn’t something that you just do on a whim. It should be something that is easily clear for you to see. If you’re doing well, you have repeat custom, and the business is growing, you may be ready to scale. Without this, you may need to wait until the right time comes.
5. Solid Operations
Another thing that you need in place alongside the capacity to scale is a solid operational structure. Again, if your operations are a mess, this is gonna make it so much harder for you to scale. Ideally, your operational structure will be sound. That way, as you start to grow, your business can handle the increase in volume without collapsing. Sometimes this can mean you need to make changes or bring in different systems and procedures to make it happen.
6. Enough Staff
To make sure that you have enough staff. While this doesn’t mean you have to go out and hire a whole bunch of new people, you do need to make sure that the people you have in your company can handle the growth. Sometimes this may mean creating new roles, restructuring different elements of the business, or hiring new teams. Ultimately, only you can know how many people you need in order to grow to where you want to be.
7. Future Projections
Thinking back to the business plan, you really need to make sure that you nail the future of projections. When you have the financial projections in place, it gives you a bit of an idea of what you need to do to expand and scale. Ideally, you want to be forecasting the sales and revenue you will be getting, so that you can focus on the action and activity you need to do to make this happen.
8. Excellent Customer Service
One really important element of scaling is making sure that you have your customer service down. If you’re providing poor customer service to the people who are buying from you, it’s only going to get harder to manage the more you grow. However, when you start to really excel in the area of customer service, your people are gonna be happy. So when the company starts to grow and you get more volume of sales, you’re not going to struggle to keep up with customer service and ensure that people are happy.
9. The Right Tools
One of the best things that you can do when you want to scale the business is to make sure that you have the right tools in place. We live in a world where there is software or an app for anything that you need to do. So why not use some of them? It might be that you want to automate different processes or that you want to use smart technology to help you organise your everyday operations in business. With the right tools in place, scaling becomes so much easier.
10. The Mindset to See it Through
Finally, you need to make sure that you have the mindset to see everything through. When it comes to scaling a business successfully, it’s not just about the physical things that you have in place. You need to make sure that you are mentally prepared and capable of doing this. Being positive, determined, and committed to what you’re building will really pay off here. If any part of you feels that you’re doubting what you’re doing, or you’re worried about being able to see it through, then you’re gonna need to do some inner work before you can make it happen.
