Scaling up your Business

Sales are flying out, margins are high and in fact, business is booming, that’s great news, but you know your business has so much more potential so now it’s time to take it to the next level.

However, with growth comes new problems, with an increase in demand for your product will you have the capacity to cope, and continue to provide the same excellent levels of service that has taken your business this far? Because, if you don’t have enough staff or resources then you’ll find yourself out of your depth, upsetting customers and doing untold damage to the brand you took so long to build. 

Therefore, it is imperative that you plan so that you are prepared for the upscale. Devise a detailed sales growth forecast by month stating the number of new customers, units, and revenue you aim to generate. The more detailed you can be the better and the more accurate your sales acquisition plan will be.

Next, you need to create a forecast for your expenses itemising the cost of new technology, equipment staffing and infrastructure to manage the increase in demand. Don’t forget anything and although you will have to estimate certain costs the finer the detail the better.

You will need to secure capital because scaling up a business can be expensive. Additional staff, resources, installing new technology and systems do not come cheap so you need to know how you intend to pay for this. Bootstrapping is one method, but this can take many years to achieve so you need to source other ways including angel investment.

Start-ups and scale-ups in the first two quarters of last year succeeded in raising more money than in any previous equivalent period which shows there are plenty of investors available.

You need to ensure that you have the sales structure ready to generate more sales. Study your whole selling process and check to see if your sales system is robust and flexible enough to manage your new orders. Do you have a sufficient lead flow to generate your forecasted figure of leads and have you got a marketing system capable of tracking and managing these?

Investment in technology is a necessity because it makes the whole scale-up process simpler and cheaper. Automation can reduce overheads from staffing whilst also making a business more efficient but is your CRM up to the task? You should evaluate computers, servers and printers as well as the software.

Finally, you need to look at each department to ensure you have adequate numbers of staff. These include customer service staff and sales representatives to follow up and close the increasing number of prospects. You may need to employ additional employees, and this is a time-consuming process, especially when recruiting qualified or specialist staff. Your role as a business owner and director will change, you will need to delegate more of the added responsibility that comes with running a larger business.

All this evaluation and planning will help to make the business transition from its current size to the new scale-up as seamless as possible. Then you can reap the rewards and start looking forward to your exit strategy.

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