Managing business growth, is it ever easy?

Scaling a business is never easy, as it inevitably involves managing customer relationships, understanding your financial responsibilities, building the brand’s identity and securing more sales. Even when you do find yourself entering a business growth phase, which can be extremely exciting and bring about immense self-satisfaction, you could soon reach the limit of your own capacity.

This is where it’s crucial to manage business growth, which can be more seamless and straightforward than getting to the point of initial expansion anyway.

Use technology to your advantage

Even if you’ve already capitalized on technology to grow your business, now is the perfect opportunity to invest in things like chatbots to respond to customer queries, inventory management software that increases admin efficiency, and automation for better service quality.

There’s a good chance that these kinds of technologies were cost prohibitive in the past. But, in order to sustain business growth, you often need to speculate to accumulate.

Avoid the temptation to micromanage

Bringing in more staff to help you to deal with a growing business can evoke mixed feelings. On the one hand, it’s yet more tangible evidence that your business is moving in the right direction. On the other, it might feel as though you’re relinquishing control.

But, whatever you do, avoid the temptation to micromanage, as this defeats the point of bringing in additional manpower. If you try to take ownership of every issue, you could end up losing your managers and confusing your staff.

Don’t sweat the small stuff

If you’re the founder of a business or have been there from the beginning, it will feel like a part of you. Therefore, it can be hard to let go of all the details, no matter how inconsequential they may be.

But, by skipping the occasional meeting or removing yourself from certain conversations, you’ll soon realize that the business can operate perfectly well without your input all of the time.

Establish processes wherever possible

In order to keep on top of business growth, it is imperative to have the resources to deliver as demand increases and to spot potential problems before they escalate into something more serious.

This calls for well-documented processes across the organization, alongside a system for monitoring to ensure they’re working. You’ll also be privy to performance data that should provide invaluable insights from which you can learn a great deal.

Don’t lose track of the numbers

So, you’ve invested in technology that wasn’t previously possible, have a competent complement of staff in place, and an established set of processes to look after the day-to-day dealings of the business. But is everything still heading in the right direction?

Even if revenue is growing at an impressive rate, you’ll still need to carefully study the numbers to guarantee profitability. After all, discretionary purchases by staff or rising supplier costs could soon outstrip revenue growth. There is no disputing numbers, to create a system with the correct procedures to fix any issues before they adversely affect your business.