Scaling a business is not the same as growing a business. Scaling your business means you're able to handle an increase in sales, work, or output in a cost-effective, reasonable manner. Your company can handle growth without suffering in other areas (e.g., employee turnover because of heavy workloads or a product that can't be produced fast enough to meet demand). Scalability is a characteristic that describes the capability of a business to perform well under an expanding workload. Scaling a business means to have an effective way to increase its performance even when you test it with larger outcomes requirements.
Scaling in business mainly depends on two factors: capability and capacity. Ask yourself: is your business capable enough to grow? Does it have the capacity to accommodate growth? What if a mere confusion becomes the reason for your business to stumble? Orders falling, miscommunication, insufficient staff, these reasons will leave you with nothing but unhappy customers.
How to Scale Your Business
Identify Milestones
Begin by identifying when you’ll run out of cash. Then, work backward to define milestones you need to hit and a timeline for when you need to hit them. This should give you a fully budgeted roadmap for moving forward and allow you to plan enough time for fundraising.
Focus on risk reducers
Risk reducers signal healthy growth. A risk reducer is any company attribute that reduces risk for investors or customers. For example, share a number of recent customers with potential investors and make sure each is referenceable.
Similarly, share how your usage numbers are increasing over time. This provides data-backed proof your customers realize the benefits of using your product -- and want to use it more. These risk reducers show investors customer success is proof of greater market potential.
Watch for an increase in bookings
To achieve an increase in bookings, making early access sales, ensuring customer success, identifying a predictable, repeatable strategy, and making that strategy profitable. This should provide you with a well-defined path to success. Then, it’s time to hone the profile of your ideal customer.
Identify your ideal customer
*Pick one target market - Don’t sell to too many different groups. Understand your ideal customer and select a repeatable, profitable, and scalable way to sell to them.
*Find a single use case - Similarly, if you sell to a variety of use cases, you haven’t proven your process is repeatable. You’ve introduced too many variables that will make it more difficult to optimize for your target buyer.
*Message your product well - Be clear when communicating your business benefits to your buyer. Make them concise, attention-grabbing, and differentiated from your competitors.
Don’t hire salespeople too early The number one mistake most founders make? it’s hiring sales staff before the company’s ready. The more phases of the sales process you can take salespeople out of -- focusing their time and attention on more valuable actions -- the better, stronger, and more lucrative your business will be.
