5 Tips on Scaling Your Small Business
When you first start a business, you might not always have plans already in mind for building a scaled business model. But as your business grows along with your success, you’ll definitely want to consider scaling in order to be prepared for future growth. Building a scaled business model takes time, planning, and research, but doesn’t necessarily need to be a daunting task. These five tips will help you through the scaling process and enable you to be more efficiently prepared to implement ideas at a future point in time.
1. Perform Consistent Accounting
If you are doing the accounting yourself (and are organized and proficient about it), then you are already ahead of the game. But if you are planning to outsource your accounting or hire an accountant, then try to do so at the onset of the business. An accountant who is familiar with the business and the numbers generated will be better equipped to provide you with the information you need to make informed decisions and maintain a strong financial base for scaling.
2. Keep Records of All Business Actions
By documenting your business procedures, you are providing yourself with a wealth of information about your business that can be reviewed and reevaluated for effectiveness as the business grows. You can see what actions and procedures might need to be adjusted or improved, and where other procedures, such as training, can become more streamlined and cost-efficient. You can keep the records in a database that is easily searchable and enables you to retrieve information quickly.
The records also enable future employees to review and gain important knowledge about the structure of the business and how it operates. They can then also offer their own helpful insight for making the scaling process easier.
3. Keep a Database of Consumers
Your biggest assets are your customers. By maintaining a thoroughly researched and informative database of target market demographics, consumer behavior, and general information about your customers, (garnered through research, mailing lists, shopper history, social media, etc.,) you’ll be better equipped to make changes accordingly in the future based on changing trends, economic factors, and other situations that may arise during scaling.
The database will enable you to maintain good customer service relationships with your customers regardless of how large you grow, so that you don’t start to appear as just a faceless corporation. Customers appreciate an enriching shopping experience and personal, attentive customer service, and so keeping the database well maintained and up to date is critical.
4. Assign Responsibilities
When you first start a new business, it may just be you running everything on your own, or perhaps you have a partner or a handful of employees that handle everything with no clear role. But as your business grows, it is important to begin to assign specific responsibilities to your employees so that have a clearly defined job position. Not only does this help your organization run more smoothly, it also helps you to recognize strengths and weaknesses amongst your various employees, and provides them with a sense of worth. When scaling your business, look for job responsibilities that might warrant an additional employee and fill that gap, rather than overloading your already existing employees.
Another benefit of this is being able to offload some of your own responsibilities, so that you can focus more on other aspects of the business that are more relevant to your own position as the owner and manager.
5. Incorporate Your Business
When you incorporate your business, you gain certain advantages that you might not have been able to avail yourself of previously. It is a good idea to speak with a business accountant first or someone who specializes in business law and incorporation so that you can make a fully informed decision. Incorporating your business requires some fees and paperwork, and is a big step towards scaling your business for future expansion.
About the Author:
Gwen Stewart is a business development professional and writer for Outbounding.com on behalf of ShareFile.com. Her line of work requires she have a reliable way to send files as well as a solid strategy for meeting tight deadlines. Any spare time she can scrape together finds her hiking, reading and enjoying the company of great friends.
