Are you looking to scale your business? Once you have set up your own business, or perhaps you have been running a business for some time now but have hit a plateau, there comes a time when you must take steps to scale your business.
Table of Contents
If you don’t, then your profits won’t grow and your business will be stagnant, or even slow down. Scaling your business is a process of learning about what is working for you and what isn’t, investing in new areas of your business, and taking risks.
It can be hard work and a challenge for all business owners, new and experienced alike. It is a vital task though and is worthwhile if it is done right. You will have a lot of things to learn along the way, and even make mistakes.
This is completely normal and what matters is how you respond to those mistakes. There are also very general mistakes that are common among business owners. To help you on your journey, here is some insight into those common mistakes and how you can avoid them for success.
Avoid These If You Want to Scale Your Business
Not valuing employees
Unfortunately, many business owners pour their budget into their customers and marketing to drive more customers and end up neglecting the needs of their employees. Employees are working hard behind the scenes in your business to make sure it is a success.
What often happens is that businesses will begin to pile more and more work and responsibilities onto their employees, whether they like it or not.
Some employees will like the growth and opportunity to do more, while others tend to get stressed and overwhelmed, which leads to poor performance, lack of motivation and general unhappiness in the workplace.
This can impact other employees, and become costly as your turnover rate increases. The reason this is an issue is that many employees feel dumped on rather than valued. They would probably like the opportunity for more, but they want fair pay and acknowledgement, as well as help and support.
Many business owners will hire staff for one role, and then it turns into five roles without any support or pay increase. Employees want to feel valued. Employees also need to be supported.
They spend a lot of time in the workplace and put a lot of effort into making your business a success, so you must show them that you value and appreciate them. To avoid this mistake, you should ensure that your employees are doing the job that they have been hired for and that you have set expectations for them to understand and meet.
Make sure you conduct regular progress reviews, so you can understand how they feel, how they are getting on and what duties they are conducting day-to-day. You should make sure that they are getting paid fairly for what they are doing, the progress they are making and the responsibilities that they are taking on.
You should also offer them support. You can do this in a variety of ways that are not pay-related, such as through chaplaincy services which can help with the health and wellness of your employees.
Not maintaining quality control
Quality control is vital when you run a business and produce a product or service. The quality of your product is going to reflect on your business, and if it isn’t very good, then your customers are quickly going to click on and not have very good things to say.
This can damage your reputation beyond repair and make it very difficult to come back from. Customers are going to talk. It is much harder to get them to praise a company than it is to share a negative experience, which will quickly be plastered all over social media and shared with their friends and family.
Unfortunately, many businesses make the mistake of cutting corners, reducing their budget to try and increase profits and not paying much attention to the quality of their product or service, which results in poor quality that drives away customers.
To avoid this mistake, you should ensure that there are strict quality control protocols within your business that will ensure all products and developments are up to standard.
This will make a huge difference and ensure that quality is met, and anything less than the standard you have set is addressed internally before it reaches and negatively impacts your customers.
If you have a service-based business, then you will want to conduct reviews that suit your business needs, to ensure that services are being delivered to a high standard. Regardless of whether you run a service or product-based business, it is important that you review all processes, set high standards and regularly train your staff in their specialist areas.
Bad bookkeeping
Accounting and bookkeeping are essential parts of scaling your business as they will provide you with all the figures that you need to invest in your growth, as well as help you make informed decisions in the present and future. It is a huge mistake to neglect your finances and not give them the attention or time that they need.
Many businesses make the simple mistake of not tracking their income or expenses, which can lead to many problems down the road – including making the wrong decisions, applying for loans, acquiring new business ventures, working with partners or investors, developing new products or services, investing in new employees or departments, creating a marketing budget, filing your taxes, paying your employees, and much more.
You can avoid this mistake by ensuring that you track everything that comes into your business and everything that goes out. You should review this regularly and see where improvements can be made.
You don’t need to do anything complicated or costly, instead, you just need to stay on top of everything and have a good accounting system in place. You can do this via software, or you can hire the help of a professional assistant
Scaling a business is going to come with risks and failures. Follow these top mistakes so you can avoid them and get ahead of the game!
