The dreams of many small businesses are to scale and grow into an enterprise that creates jobs, supports local communities, and contributes to the economy. Here are 5 steps you can take to scale your business successfully:
1. Develop Your Sales Pipeline
A healthy sales pipeline is full of potential customers who have expressed interest in your product or service. They should be qualified leads who fit within your target market’s demographic or geographic requirements. Collect as much information about these potential clients as possible, including name, email address, phone number, social media profiles (if available), company name/size/location, industry segmentation data, what they do/what they’re interested in purchasing using, when they will make a purchasing decision, why they’re interested in purchasing your product/service, etc.
2. Ensure Your Operating Systems are Stable and Secure
To scale successfully you must ensure all of your important business systems are stable and secure. This is especially important for your sales pipeline management software. Make sure your customer relationship management system is working properly, keep it up to date with the latest security patches, backup all of your information daily, and always have a recovery plan ready if something were to happen to any one of your important systems.
3. Consider Hiring An Information Technology Provider
A business that does not scale successfully will more than likely highlight the need to hire an information technology provider. This would be especially true for small businesses who are reliant on technology, as this enterprise scale strategy is more common now than ever before. This scale strategy can help you with your success metrics, so the better they are the more you’ll know what’s working and what needs to be tweaked or improved upon. Stay away from negative reviews if possible, as these could point out areas where something needs immediate improvement.
4. Recruit A Successful Team
Do not underestimate the power of having a team in place at your small business! Having a great leader will go a long way in helping your company scale successfully, but recruiting successful people who want to grow within your small business is also important for growing exponentially. These successful employees can help recruit more successful individuals once they see how amazing working at your small enterprise feels like; this word-of-mouth marketing is priceless when scaling.
5. Utilize Programs That Assist With Record Keeping & Success Metrics
It’s important that you can scale successfully by staying organized and knowing what works well so you can replicate it elsewhere as necessary…even if it’s just on a scale of one. Utilizing programs that can assist with record keeping is probably the most helpful thing you can do to scale your business successfully. This includes utilizing programs that focus on success metrics, where you can set goals and track progress towards achieving them.
These ideas will get you started on the path towards scale. Keep in mind that scaling your business successfully is a process, so don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t seem to be working at first!