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Once you have established your business and already making profits, what’s the next thing to go for? What is the next challenge that you are going to tackle? asks James Short.
For most entrepreneurs, growing the business is the next goal to aim for it. The fact that you decided to create your own company and succeeded means that you are a person of vision and ambition.
The fact that you were able to achieve your goal of owning a successful business means that you are willing to take risks. So, it’s only natural that you are compelled to go even further by upscaling. You know that if you were able to achieve this, there is a lot more to achieve. You want to strike while the iron is hot; however, once you do experience growth, you have to watch out for signs that you are growing too fast.
Growing too fast is just as detrimental to your business as no growth at all.
You have to strike a fine balance between healthy growth and maintaining your business foundation. You cannot sacrifice one over the other.
Businesses today want rapid growth. Everything needs to be done as soon as possible, not knowing that impatience is the most common cause of financial disasters. Some things just take time and that includes company growth.
If you are currently in the stages of upscaling your business, watch out for these signs of growing too fast.
Operational inefficiency
If your business is growing faster than you’ve anticipated, you might be facing operational inefficiencies. You will have a hard time keeping up with the demand and with the daily operations that you will be forced to improvise.
You might be tempted to cut corners to keep up which results in products and services that are of less than average quality. You will be pressured to hire more people in a short amount of time which results in letting through individuals who are not qualified for the job.
You will not have time to redesign your workflow and processes to accommodate your growth which results in inefficiency. These inefficiencies are just disasters waiting to happen.
Customer service is not scaling with your business
Most small businesses build their reputation based on excellent customer service. Sadly, once they experience rapid growth, their customer service is not scaling together with the business.
This results in customer complaints and a tarnished reputation. Just like upscaling your sales and marketing team to accommodate growth, so, too, should your customer service team.
By James Short, consultant
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