The 7 Essentials Your Business Needs To Grow

How to scale and grow for success

Firstly – congratulations on your desire to GROW your business

You had a business idea you believed in, you’ve made it happen, and you’re ready to grow. That is no small feat. It is without doubt your passion, tenacity, ambition and knowledge that has got you to this point. But now you might need a different mindset to grow.

Growth without planning can cause trouble long-term

Before you can get to where you aspire to be, you have to take stock of where you currently are. Be brutally honest. Any issues now will only get bigger later. While your ambitions may excite you, growth is a vulnerable time for a business, exac- erbating underlining problems and potentially leading to significant profit drops and harm to your brand.

It's not about you.

When a business is striving to scale, you – as founder – can be the very person holding your business back. Entrepreneurs at this stage need to get out of their own way. Often disruptive and autocratic by nature, our hands-on involvement can actually limit company growth. The energy that got you this far requires some thoughtful planning to tame.

Assessing the Risk of Growth

Do you actually want to grow? This may sound like a stupid question (but this is the time for stupid questions). You have got to a point where your business feels comfortable and you want to push it to the next level and find the next challenge. But an exciting vision can get in the way of a thorough risk assessment. You may not take your current customers with you. You may need to ditch suppliers who have come to feel like friends. Your finances must be crystal clear. There will be big and difficult decisions to make. And your leadership style may have to adapt.

You might feel you just don’t have the stomach for it. But equally, choosing not to grow can lead you to take your hand off the wheel. ‘Complacency Settling’ can be a major threat to a business too.

PAUSE – AND IMPLEMENT THE FOLLOWING ESSENTIAL AREAS TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOAL TO GROW

1. PLANNING

Growth without planning can directly lead to long-term decreases in profit. Recognising – and anticipating – potential pitfalls is essential at the beginning to protect your growth along the way.

Not understanding the difficulties ahead can lead to mistakes, nearly all of them avoidable with prior knowledge. Sadly these can turn a business with enormous potential into a struggling venture – and rapidly. Careful and thorough planning is essential.

Not just for the months ahead – but for three to five years, broken down into quarters, with clear tasks, goals and deliverables. You need to work with an experienced strategist and business planner who will take an objective assessment of where you are now, where you want to be, and how to get you there successfully.

YOU NEED: A THOROUGH AND REALISTIC THREE TO FIVE YEAR PLAN

2. FINANCES

This is where any growth ideas fall down, and is the most serious area to consider. You need a clear and robust digital financial dashboard where you can see all figures in real time – which you must. Cloud-based accounting solutions remove any excuse not to be on top of the figures at all times.

Whether you have a brilliant accountant or your in- house finance manager, implement systems such as Xero for digital invoicing and Dext for receipts and expenses (there are several options out there), all synced with your online banking. It’s easy to do – but easy to get wrong. Without a financial dashboard – the light that should guide every business – they may not get to the appropriate size, whatever that might be.

If you work with an external accountant, make sure they are a good one. Most are not. You need an accountant who will always be there for you, paid with a monthly retainer for unlimited support. They can mentor you about money. They will give you regular and useful reports. They will help you see the future in the present and can advise on business structures. Most importantly, they will make you do what you have to do.

Once those systems are in place, and all other things being equal, your business’ chances of survival and growth will increase exponentially. Armed with a robust accounting system, and a determination to keep it up to date, it is now down to you to use it in the same way as a careful driver uses the dashboard in the car.

YOU NEED: A CLEAR AND ROBUST FINANCIAL DASHBOARD AND IMPECCABLE ACCOUNTANTS

3. PEOPLE AND LEADERSHIP

To grow your business, you need to learn to adapt your leadership, delegate properly, trust your team and give up day-to-day control of every detail. Sometimes this is very difficult. It’s common to think only YOU know the right way to do things.

Hire – and delegate To grow you need to look beyond your own skills, experiences and capacities and let new people with new energy and ideas in. Learning to listen and take advice can be a challenge, yet this is essential to capitalise on, and develop, the skills in your team – and let them do their work. YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING ANYMORE. Delegate responsibilities for particular areas to different specialists. If you manage them right, they will add more than you could know. At a management level, build a team with broad and complementary skills. It is common for leaders to recognise their own limitations and appoint someone else to act as the managing director or chair. When you begin to tackle new opportunities, someone who has ‘gone before you’ with specialist expertise is a vital boon.

Lead differently An autocratic leadership style will not inspire your staff to be creative or confident, and actually inhibits them from making even the smallest decisions, thus disappointing you more. It’s a vicious circle. If you are tempted to micro-manage and interfere excessively, you are likely to demotivate your staff, leaving them feeling neither trusted nor valued. Unless you consciously change this type of leadership style, you risk your company only operating in your own capacity for work. This is the antithesis of growth, as people leave seeking better situations, and your business suffers from the continual ‘churn’ of your workforce.

Trust experts Surrounding yourself with experts in both financial management and the systematic execution of operations is essential. They will create realistic growth targets and develop plans with concrete actions toward achieving your growth outcomes.

Communicate and connect A strong team with strong management will all understand and seek to implement your vision by working together – with you too. Organise regular, properly-run meetings and always ensure everyone is on the same page. Adjust plans as needed, delegate differently or more. Value each person in your team and communicate to get the most out of them.

4. FOCUSED SYSTEMS

Trust experts Surrounding yourself with experts in both financial management and the systematic execution of operations is essential. They will create realistic growth targets and develop plans with concrete actions toward achieving your growth outcomes.

Communicate and connect A strong team with strong management will all understand and seek to implement your vision by working together – with you too. Organise regular, properly-run meetings and always ensure everyone is on the same page. Adjust plans as needed, delegate differently or more. Value each person in your team and communicate to get the most out of them. All businesses produce, receive and rely on large volumes of information – financial records, customer interactions, business contacts, employee details, regulatory requirements and so on. The right systems are essential to keep track of and share certain information across the organisation. As your business grows, responsibilities and tasks will need to be identified and delegated. Documentation, policies, proper contracts, clear terms and conditions, effective employment procedures are all crucial. Many new technologies can streamline your operations and help your organisation towards efficiency, especially with repetitive tasks. They can lubricate your business for faster growth. Investing in systems-wide infrastructure has another benefit. If your exit strategy is to grow to sell the business, your demonstrably well-run and efficient operating systems command a higher asking price. You need a clear direction and focus, with systems to leverage time effectively.

5. VISION

Entrepreneurs are visionaries – creators of new things. You wouldn’t have got this far without a vision. But your vision for the future requires a bit more.

Here’s what Tom Watson says about starting IBM: ‘I had a very clear picture of what the company would look like when it was finally done... when the dream — my vision — was in place. But I realised that, unless we began to act that way from the very beginning, we would never get there. In other words, I realised that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one.

From the very outset, IBM was fashioned after the template of my vision. And each, and every, day we attempted to model the company after that template. At the end of each day, we asked ourselves how well we had done, discovered the disparity between where we were and where we had committed ourselves to be, and, at the start of the following day, set out to make up for the difference. Every day at IBM was a day devoted to business development, not doing business. We didn’t do business at IBM, we built one.’

A vision doesn’t take care of itself. When you are growing, it isn’t enough. You need to keep it alive through constant monitoring, discussing, sharing ideas and co-creating strategies. It’s not just yours anymore – it is the company’s. Another way in which you need to let go.

How do you do this effectively? With regular, structured meetings. Not too many – they must all have a purpose. A monthly management meeting is the staple – part of which must be set aside for ‘blue sky thinking’. Where are you now – and where are you aiming to be? What is and isn’t working to get there? How can we think collaboratively and creatively to develop an effective strategy from here?

Make sure you have a whiteboard in the meeting room, where everyone can contribute insights and ideas to solve a problem. If meeting online, use a virtual whiteboard and ask people to use the Chat facility to suggest ideas. These can then both be saved and circulated. Doing this regularly will keep that monitoring manageable. Don’t wait until things are going badly wrong and try to suddenly firefight through one of these sessions. You can’t be creative in a panic.

6. A MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY

Market research isn’t something you do as a one-off when you launch your business. As business environments and market conditions change continually, and as you reach out to new or more customers, your market research and business plan both need to be updated continually. Regularly revisiting and updating your business plan with your management team will keep you abreast of changing market conditions and your response to them.

Keep up to date It’s a mistake to make business decisions based on out-of- date information. While published information provides useful insights and allows you to identify opportunities, your own company should be building up a picture of what your customers want, how they behave and interact with you, and how best to collect information that lets you serve them better.

Share information Take time to talk to key customers, and encourage front- line staff to share their valuable knowledge of customers with you.

Retain existing customers One often overlooked marketing strategy is to strengthen relationships with existing customers. You have already paid to acquire them, and as they now trust you, it makes sense to encourage them to buy more frequently, and to buy more items or services. The greatest profitability often comes from retaining existing customers rather than only focusing on one-off sales.

Build networks Successful entrepreneurs build a network of partners, service providers, sales channel partners, suppliers and customers, which will often be wonderful sources of marketing intelligence. Many entrepreneurs fail to look at their business through the eyes of customers, but cultivating the habit of doing this will give you greater clarity for sales.

Be creative Hire people for your marketing team with extensive experience of all the different forms your messaging and delivery can take. It is crucial you tell the right story, in the right way, in the right place, to the right people.

7. A TRUSTED ADVISOR AND CRITICAL FRIEND

One of the main actions highlighted above, across the range of areas, is to get outside expertise. You need someone to bounce ideas off, to hold an overview of your business health and development, to find ideas or directions you might not have thought of, and to introduce to you useful people who can help in particular areas.

Growth might feel intimidating, especially if you try to do it alone.

So don’t.

Ask for help – the right help.

Considering the following essential areas can determine what form that might take. We can help with all of the above – both as experts in our fields, and as entrepreneurs who have been through exactly the same process as you. We have fallen into all the pitfalls along the way – so you don’t have to.