If you’re one of the 5.47 million small businesses in the UK, you might be wondering how you can chase your dreams and scale up. Whether you’re just starting on your journey or you want to generate more profit as you battle rising energy costs, here are some ways you can scale up your business.
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What is scaling up?
Before we delve into the different ways you can scale up your business, it’s important to define what scaling up is and why it’s beneficial.
In its most basic form, scaling up means growing your business significantly to generate more profit. Separate to bog-standard growth, scaling up allows your company to grow without being hampered by processes and systems.
To properly scale up, you’ll need to have the right funding, systems, process, technology, staff and partners in place. Without these measures, you’ll fail to properly scale up your business.
How to scale up your business
1. Create a strategy
The first step is creating a strategy to either attract new customers or grow your existing customer base.
As new customers cost more to acquire, it’s usually a better idea to expand your offering with your current customers if you’re looking to scale. For example, you might start offering same-day delivery for larger orders or create a rewards scheme to increase buyer loyalty.
2. Invest in technology
If you’re serious about scaling your business, it’s important to invest in technology. Rather than have your teams spend countless hours on manual tasks, automate some of these processes.
Automating manual tasks is critical to scaling a business. This is because you can use your staff for more advanced jobs while automation takes care of the rest.
You can consider automating processes such as payroll, accounting, project management or even appointment scheduling.
3. Grow your team
If you’re scaling up, you’ll need to hire more people to keep operations running smoothly. To make sure you have the right staffing levels, it’s a good idea to map out the skills you need to grow your business. Try to think of both hard and soft skills that will help your organisation thrive.
Once you’ve outlined exactly what (or who!) you’re looking for, you can start interviewing potential candidates.
4. Set realistic goals
Once you’re ready to start scaling, it’s important to set goals so you can monitor your progress. But if you’re currently turning over £100,000 annually, it’s unlikely you’ll be turning over £1 million anytime soon.
Goals that aren’t realistic can demotivate your team, holding your growth mission back. Before you start scaling up, sit down and outline some realistic goals that can help keep you and your team motivated and on track.
Then once you’ve got your goals and master plan in place? It’s time to grow, grow, grow!