Aiming for business growth can be scary, let alone overwhelming. While it feels safer and more comfortable to stick with your company’s current practices and strategies, you won’t find scaling opportunities in the status quo.
Remember that as an entrepreneur, you need to take a gamble on your business. When you’re ready to take calculated risks for growth, try these smart moves to up your chances of succeeding:
Outsource Non-Core Tasks
Answering customer inquiries, training new employees, troubleshooting IT issues, and creating marketing plans — all of these are essential parts of the business, but that doesn’t mean you have to do them yourself. Many small- and medium-sized business owners take a hands-on approach when it comes to the day-to-day needs and operations of their companies.
They do this for two reasons. First, they want to get involved and see up close if everything is on track, which is a common practice for people who used to run a one-person shop. Secondly, hiring in-house, full-time employees isn’t exactly a practical move for a new business.
While both of these points make sense, the overall approach eats up your most valuable resources as an entrepreneur: time and attention. If you’re caught up with daily and menial tasks, how would you be able to focus on the core business functions? Growth opportunities and potential clients would easily slip through your hands without you knowing it.
Outsourcing can prevent this from happening. Tapping into specialists and service providers outside the company allows you to concentrate on running your business, launch more projects quickly, and have staffing flexibility. On top of these perks, outsourcing lets you save on salaries, workspaces, and employee benefits.
Franchise Your Business
If you’re after a speedy and less risky expansion, franchising is the way to go. Since you wouldn’t have to shell out the capital required to open and run the additional branches of your business, the risk of getting into debt is little to none. In this model, all the financial resources necessary for the new stores will be shouldered by your franchisees. You’re practically scaling your business with other people’s money.
Additionally, in the most basic sense, your franchisee acts as a long-term unit manager, only much more motivated than the managers business owners usually hire. With a stake in the growth of the business, a franchisee is more committed to finding ways to improve the service and profits of the store.
Capital and ease of management are only some of the advantages of the franchising model. They are, however, promising enough to make you ask yourself: “Is my business ready to franchise?”
Only you can answer that question, but there are telltale signs to help you make the decision. If the business is popular among the public for good reasons, stands out from competitors, have operating systems and training instructions in place, and can generate a 15-20 percent guaranteed return, then it’s an ideal candidate for franchising.
Merge With or Acquire Other Businesses
This one is an old and tested move in the book. Once the deal is done, the acquirer gains a better distribution and expands into various markets overnight. Apart from increasing their market shares, companies find themselves with more diverse services and products after the merger without doing the heavy lifting.
Scaling your business isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible. Now that you’ve laid the groundwork, it’s time to take your company to greater heights. Keep the above-mentioned tips in mind when you finally decide to make your next move.
