Are you at a point in your business where your product is a good fit for the market? If so, now may be the time to start scaling up your business to generate and manage more sales.

Here’s a list top tips to help you start to scale up.

Scaling versus growing your business.

Firstly, what is scaling? Scaling a business is not the same as growing a business. Scaling your business means you’re able to handle an increase in sales, work, or output in a cost-effective, reasonable manner. Your company can handle growth without suffering in other areas (e.g., employee turnover because of heavy workloads or a product that can’t be produced fast enough to meet demand).

Plan on what you want to be.

Scaling up requires you to make a decision on what you want to become and not where you are. Your product is market-fit so it’s time to plan your future turnover. Do you want to become a £1m a year turnover or a £10m turnover business? It’s important to set objectives to achieve this as the decisions you make as a £1m a year company are different to those of a £10m company. If you want to be the latter, then you need to start thinking like one!

Identify Milestones.

Setting milestones will certainly keep your scaling-up plan on track but a trick is linking capital to each phase of your company growth. Begin by identifying when you’ll run out of cash and work backwards to define the milestones you need to hit and a timeline for when you need to hit them. You should then see a fully budgeted road map to allow you to plan for raising the required funds for expansion.

Get ready for growth!

As your business starts to scale up, things may begin to stretch. Areas of weakness can be exposed and they are hard to fix once you’ve started the journey. Your IT system may not be robust enough, processes may be out of date or there are weaknesses in your supply chain. There will be more as your business grows so think and plan carefully on how scaling up will affect your business.

Don’t compromise on quality.

You’ve been successful because your product has market fit but as you scale up you may be tempted to reduce the quality of the product (supply-chain problems, timings etc). Building the right processes, culture and staff will ensure your product is still the best and you’ll always have good customer retention rate.

If your product is selling well and you feel now is the time to expand, get in touch with us. We will support you in scaling your business and raising the finance you need to realise your goals.