How To Scale a Business: 12 Tips To Help Your Small Business Grow
Owning a profitable business is exciting and can open the door to new opportunities for you, but the ability to scale is essential to sustainable growth. When you know how to scale a business, you can expand your reach and profits as you attract new customers to you.
12 Tips on How To Scale a Business
Scaling your business can be difficult if you don’t know what to do. To give you some direction, here are 12 tips we put together to help you get started.
1. Evaluate Your Current Situation
Scaling starts by evaluating your current situation to see if your business has the tools and room to grow. You must also consider if there is enough demand for your product to enable you to scale and continue to attract more customers. If so, make sure you and your staff will be able to handle additional increases in demand. Otherwise, your products and services will begin to suffer, resulting in a loss of customers.
2. Plan Where You Want To Be
If you determine that your business is ready and able to scale, you need to make a plan that maps out your goals and the steps you will take to reach them. It helps to look at your original business plan and modify it to account for your projected growth. If you started small and don’t have a business plan, now is the time to make one.
3. Find the Money To Grow
Entrepreneurs who understand how to scale a business know that it’s difficult to do without money. Even the most profitable businesses require additional funds to continue their growth. Common sources include business loans, crowdfunding and high-dollar investors. If your business has been extremely profitable, check your budget to see if you have additional funds available that you can reinvest.
4. Hire or Outsource to the Right People
More business requires more staff. Whether you need additional hands to help move your products or workers to provide customer service, you’ll want to hire more people. Depending on how technical an employee’s job will be, also consider how much it costs for you to train a recruit.
5. Upgrade or Expand Your Technology
Nowadays, technology plays a crucial role in the expansion of a business. You may need to purchase new laptops, tablets or software to help your business grow. Your business may also require new equipment to handle the increase in sales transactions. At PaymentClub, we offer several types of terminals and plans to help you collect customer payments while saving money.
6. Explore Digital Advertising
Marketing is a critical part of a business because you can’t attract customers if they don’t know that you exist. Knowing how to scale a business using digital advertising will help you overcome this. While there are companies that only use organic traffic to reach their customers, at times you may need to use paid advertising to reach your audience through social media.
7. Make Customers a Priority
You can’t learn how to scale without understanding the importance of your customers. Without them, you wouldn’t be able to stay in business. A growth-minded company prioritizes its customers, realizes their value and invests resources into nurturing its relationships with them. As you make plans to grow your business, think of ways to improve your customer relationships through promotions, customer service, and user experience.
8. Improve Your Customer Retention
It is also good to know how to scale a business by targeting your current and past customers for future sales. Set up a system to capture their contact information so that you can reach them regarding future products and sales. An easy way to do this is to provide short forms both in-store and online for them to complete with their name, address, and email. You can use this information to develop your future marketing plans.
9. Ask for Referrals
Loyal customers are often willing to refer you to their friends, so why not take advantage of this? Asking customers for referrals is a great way to increase your customer base and profits. You can also encourage referrals by asking customers to share your brand on social media and offering discounts as an incentive.
10. Invest in Partnerships
If you don’t know how to scale a business using a partnership, you are missing out on a great tool for your business. Consider partnering with individuals with similar goals and values as your business. Also, determine if a potential partner has a sizable target audience that you would like to reach. A well-planned partnership can increase your sales and brand recognition.
11. Find a Business Mentor
A resource that is often overlooked is a business mentor. The Small Business Association helps fund a volunteer program called SCORE, which matches business mentors with small business owners who will benefit from the mentor’s knowledge. Discussing your scaling plans with a mentor can help you refine them and avoid potential mistakes.
12. Be Flexible
A critical part of knowing how to scale a business is understanding how to face problems and issues as they arise. This requires you and your staff to be flexible whenever necessary. You also need to be willing to pivot and adjust at any time so that your business can survive through supply chain issues, hard economic times and other things. This is one of the hallmarks of a business that continues to scale and grow regardless of what’s going on around them.
These tips will help you structure a solid plan so you can scale your business and grow.
How To Scale a Business With Help
Scaling a business requires careful planning and hard work, but the payoff is worth it. Use these tips to help you get started and continue to look for helpful resources that will guide you as you grow.
At PaymentClub, we enjoy working with small businesses and entrepreneurs as they learn how to scale a business. If you have additional questions about scaling your business or need help choosing a payment system, contact us today.
