Every entrepreneur’s goal is to achieve high profits in business. On top of that, business owners want to establish their brands as an authority in their niche. Once business owners gain reverence over time, people will recognize and choose their brands over competitors.
But it’s not that easy. For one, business owners must distinguish between growing and scaling a business. When your business stays in growth mode, you increase revenue while simultaneously increasing expenses. This leaves you with minimal gross profits. On the flip side, scaling a business means increasing your revenue while decreasing or maintaining costs. In turn, you’ll have high gross profit margins.
I guess by now, you’d want your business in the “scale” mode to achieve maximum profitability. Lucky for you, we’ve rounded up these 12 steps on how to scale your business.
Table of Contents
1. Create systems
Systems are crucial in business, regardless of industry. Having proper and organized systems will make entrepreneurs avoid business pitfalls altogether. Without systems, you could see yourself scrambling to put out fires, while you could’ve just completely prevented it in the first place.
Having systems means you can apply them in every business facet such as operations, sales, production, marketing, and more. Plus, systems allow you to scrutinize every process or step. If one process doesn’t fall into the systems you implement, you can avoid mistakes that will cost you money down the road.
So what are the benefits of systems? Here are the top six ways systems can make you scale your business:
- Understands fundamentals. Know why you do certain things in your business. This way, you eliminate the fallacies that are weighing your business operations down.
- Increases consistencies. Once you’ve grown your business in two to three years, it can be easy to be complacent. Having systems means you’re following a set of actions that ensure consistency.
- Reduce the impact of change. You’ll experience changes as you run your business. The best way systems can help you face change is to reduce it or its impact.
- Proper employee training. Employers can sometimes be too overwhelmed that they hire the first applicant that shows interest. However, you need to have systems in recruiting employees to hire only employees suitable to your business.
- Makes your business sellable. With systems, your business becomes highly attractive to prospective buyers. Systems let you work on the business instead of in the business.
- Measures progress. You always have to measure progress to know where your business is at. Systems create a specific benchmark for drawing the line between growing, scaling, or failing.
2. Have a vision
Having a vision should be one of the initial steps in scaling your business. Shaping a vision means constantly referring to that guideline about running your business. You will know which direction you can steer the business to when you have a vision. Plus, visions also allow business owners to say no to the wrong opportunities and yes to the right ones.
It’s imperative to have a clear vision to not fall prey to false beliefs or principles. And the anatomy of a clear vision involves three elements:
- Your company’s core values
- The purpose why you’re doing the things you do in your business
- An envisioned future that enables you to think differently
3. Empower employees
It can be tempting to be the halo that looms over everyone’s heads when you’re establishing your business. But, of course, as an entrepreneur, you want to maximize employee performance. You might even want to do most of the tasks you think you do exceptionally well to ensure everything goes smoothly. But this shouldn’t be if you’re going to scale your business.
By not delegating, you can become the bottleneck in your business that slows down operations. That said, build a reliable organization and empower employees to do their jobs. Create a team instead of a group. The difference is that a group is a bunch of people with their own agenda. On the other hand, a team is a bunch of people working toward a common goal.
4. Protect your company values
Your company values should be the bedrock that your company thrives on. These values also lay the foundation of how your company should operate, engage with customers, and hire employees. Finally, company values provide that common purpose that you and your employees should live by.
Additionally, setting company values will dictate employee behaviors and help you communicate with customers appropriately. Moreover, it sets the guidelines on how your decision-making process should be. Remember to create relevant and authentic values, so they resonate with your entire organization.
5. Prioritize quality and consistency
If you want to know how to scale your business, consider these two vital factors: QUALITY and CONSISTENCY.
Prioritizing quality equates to keeping customers for life and attracting new ones. Customers look for quality, and if you lack this in your products and customer service, your customers will quickly look for alternatives. Quality encourages customer loyalty, so they continue to do business with you. Moreover, quality is a huge factor in long-term revenue and high profitability.
Plus, maintaining quality also lets entrepreneurs charge higher prices. Take Apple, for example. Customers buy from them, regardless of how much they charge because they’ve maintained a certain level of quality over the years.
Next is consistency. Consistency requires long-term commitment and ensuring consistency in business sets up your business for success. Consistency allows you to stay focused on the drivers and processes that help you achieve your goals.
6. Create perfect and innovative products
This step is a no-brainer. As business owners, you want to determine ways to disrupt the industry with innovative products and services. That’s why it’s crucial to do market and competitor research to see what’s already out there.
More often than not, your idea won’t be the first of its kind. So you’re technically reshaping an old idea and turning it into a new one with a twist. Expect to reel in prospects when you have products or services that resolve customer pain points.
7. Hire a team of A-players
As mentioned, systems allow you to have an organized and stringent recruitment guideline. This lets business owners hire only deserving people who rightly belong in the organization. When hiring employees, see to it that you hire not only skills and talent but also character. People can learn skills, but not many people can change their characters for the better.
Also, having a team of A-players ensures that they get the job done right. These high-performing employees will be your company’s best assets that catapult it to success.
8. Connect with customers
The next step in this “how to scale your business” list is connecting and engaging with your customers. Some brands put effort into getting their messages, products, and services out there. However, you won’t have that connection that pulls prospects toward your brand without engaging with customers.
Engaging with customers involves communicating with them on social media, replying to their queries on your website, or offering them enticing perks. You must put a face to that brand or logo, and communicating with your customers is key to customer loyalty.
9. Spy on competitors
One of the initial steps in establishing your new business is competitor research. This step is crucial because you want to know what’s available in the market. Once you know what similar products and services are available, you can tweak yours and make it better.
Visit competitors’ websites and check what their customers are talking positively and negatively about their products. You may also want to go through their social media channels and find gold in the comments section. Gather all vital information you can and use this to make your offers better, more affordable, more efficient, and high-quality.
10. Build your brand
You won’t scale your business if you don’t build your brand. Build a powerful brand that holds an advantage over the rest of the competition. It’s good to revert to the purpose of why you’re doing the business in the first place. Also, one way to build your brand is to share your brand’s story to create that emotional connection and impact. And this also entails shaping a brand identity that fully reflects your band’s personality.
11. Advertise, advertise, advertise
Don’t expect your brand to suddenly gain fame and popularity after creating your website, logo, and social media channels. Instead, the most critical step in running and scaling a business is consistent, creative, and compelling advertising.
Also, it’s better not to put your eggs in one basket. This means diversifying your advertising methods and seeing which ones give you the most conversions. A/B test your marketing campaigns to prevent wasting marketing budget on campaigns that don’t work. If necessary, hire marketing experts to help you with the nitty-gritty in online advertising.
12. Continue evolving
Evolving your brand means staying true to what your brand believes in but adapting to industry trends and consumer behavior changes. This way, you attract new customers. However, evolving also means reminding your existing customers why you’re staying relevant to the changing times.
The Bottomline
Knowing how to scale your business means you’re a step closer to reaching goals that give you long-term revenue. In addition, these simple ways will ensure that you maintain regular customers while reeling in new ones. One of the most challenging business facets is retaining customers. And these scaling methods will keep your brand consistent, fresh, efficient, and meaningful. Plus, it helps you keep customers for life.
An author of DigitalGpoint, We have published more articles focused on blogging, business, lifestyle, digital marketing, social media, web design & development, e-commerce, finance, health, SEO, travel.
For any types of queries, contact us on digitalgpoint.webmail@gmail.com.