Startups are designed to grow fast, and managing all aspects of this can turn out to be quite tricky. An increase in sales sees you heading in the right direction, while the business makes a name for itself – things could hardly be developing any better.
This, however, means you have to do a lot of scaling, which requires constant management and organizational changes. Here are some great tips to get you on the right path, and ultimately to success.
6 Ways to Manage Your Fast Growing Company
#1 Build a Great Team
The people around you, supporting you, and contributing time, ideas, and energy to your projects and brands are at the core of successful, happy, and functioning businesses. Learn who has real value in your team and look after them, as they will undoubtedly look after you.
Promoting your best worker to a different position might not be the best move, essentially losing their top skills in that particular field.
However, we don’t want to deter or hold back our superstars, so don’t forget to reward great work, or to offer other incentives and pathways for professional and personal growth. Avoid having high employee turnover as it’s not helpful for a business.
It means that the most experienced workers left their positions and are benefiting someone else, and now, a lot of time and energy has to be spent finding and training inexperienced people.
#2 Guide the Business to Success
One way that business owners often struggle to manage fast-growing companies is by trying to do everything themselves. That’s what key members of the team are for! Make sure that you have trusted managers in place to handle their designated departments, the rest of the team, and all the smaller day to day things.
This will mean that you are less stressed and can focus on the overall strategies and trajectory of the company.
Another key member of the team, or at least honorary member, would be a mentor. Someone with a lot of experience as a CEO or entrepreneur will really lessen the burden.
Even the most successful entrepreneurs looked to mentors for guidance along the way. So put any sense of pride or ego to the side, and accept all the wonderful wisdom that can be provided.
#3 Monitor Finances and Adapt
As your startup hastily expands, you will have to quickly adapt your tactics and may have to change or open up additional work-spaces, or even find extra employees at a moment’s notice.
All of this doesn’t come without its financial implications, so you will have to be flexible in this area as well. According to a current undergraduate course in business design, diverse knowledge and hands-on experience are essential tools to aid and implement innovative change.
One way to adapt to changing environments requiring extra finances is to collect outstanding debts from all associated companies and clients, it is your money after all, and it should be put to good use. This will reduce the amount of money that you would potentially need to borrow, reducing fees long term.
Discounts could be offered to customers who pay promptly and you could decrease prices and promote a massive sale for some quick revenue.
Check: 5 Awesome Tools for Managing your Finances and Staying out of Debt
#4 Have a Comprehensive Strategy
Many businesses have a long term vision already thought up and plenty of smaller short term goals for the more immediate future.
However, the process of planning out your objectives should mimic the planning of a storyline for an award-winning novel or movie, namely beginning, middle, and end. In business terms, this would translate as short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals.
Short-term goals can be smaller objectives like gaining new skills and experience, and accomplishing smaller things. These will aid you like stepping stones to bigger goals. Consider a 1-year time frame, approximately.
Medium-term goals would have a longer time frame, around 3 or 5 years, and will serve as a bigger stepping stone or way point for your final objective.
Medium-term goals are often missing from a plan, or skipped over when a company grows rapidly. Make sure to include them and complete them to help deliver the long-term vision.
Read Also: 7 Steps to Successful Business Process Mapping
#5 Keep the Best, Leave the Rest
While the size of your business grows and so do the potential problems, it’s actually important to think of what you need less of, not more.
Some of the things that worked in the beginning won’t work anymore, so get rid of them. There’s probably a bunch of things slowing you down that you didn’t realize.
Find out what your best performers are and really take them and the service around them to the next level. Some companies have even reduced their selection of goods for sale to just their top selling item. This allows them to focus resources, increase experience, and enables the company to stand out as the best provider in their field.
#6 The Customer is Always Right
Maybe that’s not so true, but it is very important to keep your customers happy, as without them, you don’t have a business.
Customers will give you immediate feedback and the most relevant ideas to improve your products and services. They will provide you with key insights as to how to keep them happy. Never stop listening to them, after all, they pay the bills.
Make sure to implement lines of communication with customers to obtain the necessary feedback, and a system to enable positive action upon their input. When customers are unsatisfied with your business, it will be hard to keep them, and even more difficult to get them to return.
As you can see, transitioning from an ambitious startup to managing a rapidly growing business will require quick thinking and changes in tactics. If you manage to apply the strategies listed above, it would be easier for your business to grow smoothly and successfully.
Read More: How To Manage A Small Business Successfully
Author Bio: Jennifer Hahn Masterson
