Your business is booming — and fast. Congratulations! Sales are high, profits are even higher. It’s exciting, exhilarating, a sure sign of success — and often a difficult beast to manage. The truth is that if you’re not fully prepared for rapid growth, your dream of leveling up could turn into the nightmare of a downward spiral.
While fast-paced growth isn’t always easy to handle, like anything else in business all you need is the right planning and execution to stay ahead as your pipeline overflows. Let’s dive into how to not only manage your growth but also ensure it’s sustainable.
Tips for managing business growth the right way
It’s critical that you maintain control amid a heavy boom period. Here’s how to do it.
Determine the cause of your growth
Clearly something is going well if the clients are coming in droves — but what is it? The first step to managing your growth is to pinpoint exactly what’s causing it and why you’re standing out above your competitors, and make whatever it is a key aspect of your business model.
Think of it as a reality check — you need to be sure that this increase will continue and isn’t based on a one-off windfall before you start scaling your business.
Continue prioritizing client experience
Whatever stage of growth your business is experiencing, the most important thing is to ensure you’re maintaining the same level of support for your clients. Diminishing that support could result in you losing just as many clients as you gained in the first place.
Continue to listen to them, meet their needs, and use your growth as an opportunity to provide even better service instead of taking away from the positive experience they’re used to. Utilize social media and client satisfaction surveys to get a better understanding of how your clients are responding to your evolution. After all, they hold the best ideas that could help you grow even further.
Measure staffing needs
Fast-paced growth means you’ll likely need to add to your existing team, but before you do so, take a step back and carefully evaluate your needs. First assess your current staff — can their responsibilities be optimized to meet the increasing demands?
If you determine that it’s critical to hire more employees but aren’t ready to take the expensive risk, consider hiring temporary staff to get an idea of how different roles can benefit your business model. You can also start by utilizing freelancers to take on the often tedious jobs like data entry to not only cut costs but also free up more time for strategizing.
Hire wisely — and with intention
The new team members you eventually bring on to manage your growth are inevitably going to influence the success of your business moving forward. These employees should reflect your company’s vision, fit in with the culture you’ve cultivated, and hold the same values that serve as the glue of your work environment.
If you fail to keep these factors in mind and instead hire a team solely based on their skillset, you could end up with decreased levels of happiness on the job and poor work performance.
And if the growth leaves you with too much on your plate to give enough focus to hiring the right people, consider delegating the lift to a third-party recruitment firm. This way you can ensure the proper steps are taken to find the best candidates for the job.
Keep finances in check
With revenue, profits, and cash flow rising, you’ll likely experience unforeseen costs like hiring new team members, spending money to quickly jump on new opportunities, and more. But if you plan correctly, these unexpected expenses aren’t as heavy of a burden on your finances.
This means it’s time to adopt a new budget plan and reallocate money where necessary — getting complacent could put you at risk of financial mismanagement instead of staying on top of future planning. Set benchmarks, stay organized, and forecast upcoming profits and sales, and make these tasks a habit so you can stay consistent as your business continues to grow.
Scale your business
It’s critical to keep up with your own development by scaling your business model — just because something worked before doesn’t mean it’s going to be effective now. You may need to:
- Redefine organizational structures
- Set new, standardized processes
- Invest in technology
- Train managers
The most important part of scaling your business is to set solid goals and deadlines so you can ensure you’re staying on track to grow even more in the future.
While rapid growth can sometimes be volatile and chaotic, properly preparing and taking action on the tips above will make it much easier to celebrate the success instead of spiraling out of control.
Shelbie Watts
Shelbie is the Content Marketing Manager for Harvest. She works to provide relevant, informative, and engaging material to team leaders and hopes to make work easier one article at a time.