Scaling Your Business: 6 Stages You Need To Know

As an entrepreneur, you are always thinking about taking your business to the next level. In simpler terms, it means scaling up the company to enhance its productivity so that it can meet the growing customer demand. While everybody wants to scale up as soon as they get the hang of the business processes, it is not possible to take the big step without preparing for it in advance.

When you work on building an empire, you are inevitably burdened with additional responsibilities of increased work hours, deadline pressures, shortage of resources, storage of stock, etc. Your organisation must be equipped to sustain the growth spurt of becoming a large scale organisation from being a start-up.

If you are planning to purchase a profitable business for sale in Canada, you will have to be aware of the six stages of scaling to develop it further. If you are inclined to move up the ladder quickly in the ruthless market, then you need to cover these stages of growth. Let us take a look.

Stage 1: Commitment To Growth And Development

You have been handed over the control of an established business, and now you want to reach for the stars. It is great to be enthusiastic about improving, but you need to understand the business plan before embarking on the journey of expansion. You must carefully research the market dynamics and the marketing strategies being employed to attract new customers and retain the existing ones.

Once you are comfortable with the operations of the business model, you can start thinking about making alterations to adapt to the upcoming development. To begin with, you must prepare a business plan which must have quarterly and annual targets. These must be aligned with the long-term goals of boosting sales and amplifying the customer database.

It must have the details of the expenses incurred to accomplish these objectives and an allocated budget for the same. Once you know the budget, you need to source funds from investors and adopt financial management to keep the business cash-flow positive.

Stage 2: Get The Right Team Onboard

Every great organisation is built by its people. So when you are scaling up, you will need skilled teams which can deliver the results you are expecting. You need to find experts in your field so that you don’t have to spend time training them and developing their talents. Take your sweet time to recruit the right people for each job function and get them together to collaborate and work as a team.

Delegate responsibilities to the team leaders and make them responsible for different projects and people. Create a positive and balanced work culture which entices the best candidates and build an exceptional human resource asset.

All of the members should be aware of the short-term and long-term goals and must strive to achieve them with unfailing vigour. For example, the second-best employer in Canada, University of Toronto has been investing in hiring the best people for a long time now, which has helped it to excel.

Stage 3: Build A Network For Partners

A business cannot work in isolation. It needs the support of various other entities like service partners, vendors, suppliers, distribution network partners, stakeholders, and customers. To accomplish large scale operations, you need to build strong and lasting relationships with all the internal and external audience related to the business.

It will help in creating a network where mutually beneficial arrangements can be organised to make the most out of every situation and reduce costs. These collaborations can help you get investments and find venture capitalists among your contacts for funding the future endeavours.

Therefore, when you are looking for Canada’s best places to buy a business, you must ensure that you find one which shares happy relationships with its people.

Stage 4: Create Sustainable Competitive Advantage

To gain a large part of the market share, you need to stay ahead of the competition, and this can be achieved through increasing sales and return on investment. The best way to ensure a rise in sales is to identify the core competency of the business and to develop it further to secure your position in the market as an expert.

Prepare the infrastructure of the organisation to meet the growing needs of supply and delivery. From marketing to the procurement of stock, everything should be systemised into repetitive processes which become an inbuilt part of the organisation’s daily operations.

It will help in creating a strong brand and cutting down on expenses. IBM, one of the leading names in IT services across the world, has leveraged its patents and core competency to emerge as a flourishing company since its inception in 1911.

Stage 5: Keep Reinventing To Attract Customers

The amplified revenue will allow the creation of new products and services and favour the entry of the business into new markets. Besides expansion, it is essential to develop new product features and services to stay relevant in the dynamic market. Technology-driven advancements are the need of the hour.

You must have a dedicated team working on research and development, which makes innovative products that outperform the existing products to stand out in the crowd. For example, Google is the biggest search engine in the world, but it has not stopped at that.

The company has been innovating consistently with digital products like Gmail, Google Books, Adsense, AdWords, Google Talk, Google Translate, Google Earth, YouTube and more. You cannot become complacent after little success. You need to keep setting new goals and do better than before every time.

Stage 6: Market Your Products To The Right Audience

All of the hard work is going to get wasted if you are selling your products to the wrong customers. You must create a customer profile of your ideal customer and sell to them instead of targeting the entire market. You must create advertising messages which are exclusively directed at these people to grab their attention and make them come back to you.

Don’t oversell or bombard them with too many promotional communications. However, utilise all the customer touch points like print ads, online ads, social media marketing, blogs, articles, website, point of sale material etc. to inform them about the latest offerings.

Conclusion

Stagnation and failure are common problems which have ended entrepreneurial careers. Thus when you purchase a business for sale in Canada, you must plan for the future as well. Take note of the scaling up tactics mentioned above and grow your company in the most streamlined and organised manner.