Scaling a small business takes strategy, the right people and a great realistic long-term plan. You need to identify when, how and where to grow and get the right people spear heading your strategies to take your business to the next level. Make not mistake, scaling is not for every business. You need to take that crucial step at the right time because scaling too quickly can be dangerous — leading to failure instead of the viral growth you expect. Don’t rush to scale your business immediately, its OK to start small with a big vision to be a leading player in your industry. With a great plan to accomplish your goals and milestones one step at a time, you can and will get to your destination.
Consider the following strategies and tips if and when you are ready for viral business growth. But remember you should be ready to invest a lot more resources into your business than you are doing now. This will affect your burn rate i.e how much money you will need to inject into your business to see the expected results.
Find the best, smartest, adaptable and innovative people
Pushing your company past the startup phase to achieve viral growth will demand and require the best people who are extremely good at what they do. You cannot compromise on talent when you are ready to change more customers and go after bigger markets.If you do not have the internal talent to take your business to the next level, do not hesitate to hire the very best out there who can get you the results you expect within the shortest time possible. Your business is about to get a lot more structured and
Create both short and long-term realistic milestones
Accomplishing your goals and your business’ vision should be your ultimate target in a specific time. Once you have recruited your team of innovative people, out them to task to start working immediately towards the goal. Your choice of business professionals must be excellent within their given area of expertise. You can’t afford a set back in this process, given the amount of resources you are pushing into scaling your business.
Make it insanely easy for others to spread and share your content quickly
If you are not sharing informative and educative industry content you should start immediately. Business content marketing has come to stay and companies like KISSmetrics have invested heavily into content marketing and guess what their resources attract hundreds of thousands of visitors every month. You can invest in tools that allow prospective customers and existing clients to share your resources in different forms including embeddable content, simple forwarding to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest etc and cross-posing to large relevant sites.
Expand or build competitive infrastructure to support your growth
Once you begin to implement your viral growth strategies , you should have put plans in place in accommodate new customers and or management. Make sure you have a great plan for managing your employees, customers, supporting your new clients, responding to existing customers, managing your finances, managing billing and invoicing, enhancing your broadband experience with services like the talktalk business broadband and most importantly creating a robust technology behind your product if a greater part of your business is online.
Don’t give up on your way to implementing your business goals, it could take time. If you think you’re ready to scale you are right, if you think you are not ready to scale you are right. Take time to anaylze your current business processes and make an informed decision about where you are heading as a business. With a great idea and passionate employees there is always room for growth.