All entrepreneurs are after business growth. Who would not want to see their company gaining strong demands and excellent feedback? Everyone wants their product lines to be profitable and their brand has a diverse customer base.
Once your business shows all the signs of fast growth, the next step is to make sure you are efficiently managing business growth. All the tasks included during this exciting time can be enough to stress you out. Aside from ensuring your product quality, efficiency, and customer services stay the same, there’s the need to work harder than before to scale along with the ever-changing market.
Luckily, successful entrepreneurs are happy to share some of their secrets to managing a growing brand. Here are four dos and don’ts to remember when trying to keep up with rapid business growth.
Do Ask the Right Questions
Before you attend to business growth, it helps to define your growth objectives. Ask yourself relevant questions to see if you truly are ready to grow and expand your business. You can start by asking these questions.
- Are you managing the business well or do you have cash flow problems?
- How are you supposed to finance business growth?
- Are you scaling the business too fast?
- What are your objectives in growing the business?
- How do you plan on hiring the right talent to fill in open positions?
- Are your production line and employees ready to take on bigger challenges?
- How are your capital assets, inventory, overhead, receivables, and sales faring?
- How do you plan on growing your business?
Answering these questions can help you determine if your brand is ready to take on bigger challenges relevant to your growth. These can also help you check how you are able to manage and control the financial aspects of your business. Determining your key objectives enables you to make more informed decisions concerning business growth.
Don’t Take Business Efficiency and Safety for granted
Many businesses are unable to stay consistent after scaling. You may have more customers to cater to now that your business is growing. But that is never enough reason to skimp on business safety and efficiency.
Business inefficiency results in wasted resources, additional errors, decreased employee and customer morale, and a soiled reputation. The same goes for taking safety for granted. This is the perfect recipe for a potential lawsuit, which is something no growing company wants to experience.
You can improve business efficiency and safety by investing in the right tools and technology along with regular employee training. You want to make sure all of your staff are trained to do their jobs. Keep them engaged, and they will stay loyal and motivated to stay productive and efficient.
Improve your employees’ work environment by investing in the right labels and signs, regular housekeeping, and reliable commercial lighting solutions. Implement safety protocols and reward them for engaging in safe behavior. Encourage them to take breaks as often as needed and give them access to occupational clinicians they can turn to in times of physical and mental distress.
Do Stop Micromanaging Your Managers
Many entrepreneurs are guilty of micromanaging every employee just to make sure tasks are accomplished their way. You may have managed to grow your small business by having a direct line to all of your employees. But now that your business is growing, you have more important tasks to cover confusing your staff about whom to go to in case of issues or trouble.
Micromanaging your employees stops them from using their creativity and problem-solving skills in doing their jobs. This also helps decrease employee morale, drain employee’s confidence, and lead to your managers and employees doubting themselves. Don’t forget that you can feel burned out for shouldering all the unnecessary work in the business.
Let your managers do their jobs. Avoid the temptation to hover, be there for every meeting, or make decisions without involving your managers. Show your managers that you trust them enough to do a great job. This way, you can stop confusing employees while boosting the morale of your managers.
Don’t Forget to Capitalize on Your Strengths
Each business has its own strength and weakness. While it is important that you work on improving your weaknesses, the same goes for focusing on your strengths. Leveraging the things your business is actually good at with help you establish you brand as a reliable business in your niche.
Don’t take data and analytics for granted. Instead, use these are your guide to further learn about what consumers want. Get to know what your target audiences need and ways you can keep up with your competitors.
Test your strengths and find ways you can continue improving them. Remember that mastery can help you make your brand different from the rest. Choose to retain your core competency while growing your business and you can enjoy better success in the future.
These are but four examples of the best practices you can consider when managing a rapidly growing brand. With more tasks on your plate, it is quite easy to doubt your abilities, stress your team out, and bring your customer’s confidence down. But by exercising these growth management dos and don’ts, you can effectively navigate these exhilarating times.