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Building a successful company is not only about increasing sales and revenue. When scaling a business, an organization also needs the right strategy, team, and processes in place to support new customers, products, and services. While any business leader dreams of becoming an overnight success, successful scaling involves building and executing a long-term, sustainable strategy. No matter the size of your business, understanding what it means to scale and identifying actionable steps you can take to do so are both key to reaching your goals.
The terms “growth” and “scale” are often used interchangeably. While the two are related, they have distinct differences.Growth refers to increasing revenue at the same rate that a business adds resources, such as new team members, technology, and capital, to name a few. On the other hand, scaling is when an organization identifies ways to grow more efficiently, resulting in revenue growth at a substantially greater rate than increases in resources and expenses. Scaling a business requires thoughtful, strategic planning. Here are 4 ways you can scale your business.
1. Strategize Sales
Increasing sales is a top priority for any business looking to scale. Scaling sales can either mean adding new customers or growing the average revenue from current customers. While both options drive results, expanding your relationship with current customers is often more cost-effective than attracting new business. On average, getting a new customer can cost six to seven times more than keeping and engaging customers you already have.
2. Ponder on Technology
A global study from Automation Anywhere found that the average worker spends than roughly 40% of their day on manual administrative tasks. With the right technology, many of these tasks can be automated, freeing up time for team members to focus more on broader business goals and strategic priorities. Automating manual tasks is critical to scaling a business because you can drive improved business outcomes among the team members you already have on board. When thinking about how to scale your business through automation, compare different technology partners and vendors based on usability, customer service, implementation timeline, cost, and other key criteria.In addition to automating tasks, standardizing your business processes using technology will help as you build your team. Implementing approved technology and documenting a clear set of instructions for specific tasks will make the scaling process much smoother.
3. Expand Your Team
As you map out the team you need to scale your business, a first step is determining the skills required to meet your goals and identifying any skills gaps you have on your team.Think about specific hard and soft skills that will help your organization drive business outcomes and best support customers. Hard skills are job-specific, technical, measurable competencies gained through education and experience. Soft skills are self-developed traits that help individuals work well in a team, lead by example, and adapt well to a company’s culture. Soft skills can be a bit tricky to define and measure, but are no less important than hard skills.Also take leadership skills into consideration, as leaders on your team are responsible for providing direction and ensuring team members understand what needs to be accomplished to achieve your business goals.
4. Hire The Right Help
During the early stages of business growth, many organizations have a handful of core team members who wear multiple hats. However, in the long run, expecting every team member to be a high-performing generalist can lead to costly errors and burnout. As you scale your business, consider bringing in skilled specialists to improve efficiency and drive outcomes.Engaging specialized talent might sound costly and challenging to scale, which can be the case with full-time workers if they aren’t yet needed full time.Rather than making the business case and waiting for budget approval to hire full-time workers, independent professionals are often paid on a per-project basis and can be brought in as needed. This enables you to create a variable cost for talent, compared to the traditional fixed cost for full-time workers. With this approach, you can more efficiently scale your team while reducing costs, boosting productivity, and driving business agility.
This article is from Entrepreneur.com
