Starting a small business is an exhilarating endeavor, but the true measure of success lies in its growth and expansion. While your startup may begin with humble beginnings, it has the potential to flourish and evolve over time. Rather than shying away from this transformative phase, it’s crucial to embrace it wholeheartedly.
However, for your startup to thrive during this growth period, you need to adopt the right mindset, transitioning from trying to do everything yourself to becoming a proficient delegator. Also, having a reliable support system in place will ensure that your business functions smoothly with minimal stress and personal input.
In this article, we will be showing you the essential steps to prepare your startup for growth. The tips in the post will empower you to navigate this exciting journey with confidence and pave the way for long-term success.
Tips for Preparing Your Start-Up for Growth
#1: Invest in your software
One of your first tasks when preparing to grow your start-up is to invest in quality software in order to simplify and support your progress. If you try to grow your business with the wrong software—or with none at all—you will find that it is very much like trying to keep several plates spinning in the air at the same time.
All you will end up doing is wearing yourself out and getting frustrated. Software is there to help, and there are a few types of software that you need as a bare minimum:
- Payroll
Quality payroll software will help your business stay compliant while also improving the onboarding process for both you and your new employees. It will help you stay in control of your employees’ pay rates, hours, taxes, and holiday requests, while also being able to integrate into accounting platforms.
- CRM
CRM software will help you keep track of your customers, their details, and their purchasing habits within your business. That will allow you ample opportunity to offer them discounts and deals that they will be interested in during future promotions. It will also enable you to build strong relationships with your customers, which encourages customer loyalty and promotes more sales.
- Scheduling
Scheduling software will help you delegate work to employees as well as organize your own workload so that nothing gets forgotten. Also, it can help you accurately estimate project deadlines which can, therefore, help you avoid late delivery charges or penalties that could be imposed on you by your customers.
#2: Put procedures in place
When you are moving from doing everything in your business yourself to hiring others to perform the tasks for you, you are going to want some sort of congruency so that your customers can be assured of getting the same (or better) level of service that you were originally providing.
In order to get all your employees working in the same manner as yourself, you will need to write procedures for each of the jobs for them to follow.
Of course, procedures are not just about keeping control of what your employees are doing at any one time; they are also there to assist your employees when they are carrying out their duties. To achieve this, you will have to write them out clearly and in a language that is easy to follow. Understand that not all your recruits are going to have the level of technical knowledge as you (or the same skill set).
#3: Hire sufficient numbers of staff
As briefly mentioned above, you are also going to have to think about hiring employees to perform the work you have outlined in your procedures. There are various ways that you can go about this, or of course, you can take advantage of all that is open to you and employ a mixture of workers:
Agency workers
From time to time, most businesses take advantage of using agency workers. These are workers who come in on a temporary basis to work for your company, although you will not have to pay them directly as you will be paying the agency that is supplying them. In turn, they will pay the workers. It is important to realize that you will probably have to pay a premium rate per head to the agency for supplying your business.
The bonus of this arrangement, however, is that if you do not like a worker or they do not fit in with your business, you can just refer them back to the agency without any hard feelings. Moreover, if you find a worker that you do like, you will be able to offer them a permanent place in your workforce and therefore take them off the agency’s books.
Outsourced employees
If you require the skills and experience of a professional person (or team) for a set period of one or two short-term projects, you may find it better and easier to outsource the work in question to a business or a self-employed professional.
This will mean that you do not have the stress of finding them additional work after the project has finished and that they are fully aware—as are you—that any contract between you is finished as soon as the work is completed.
Permanent employees
As always, you have the option of advertising for workers in the usual ways, going through countless résumés in the hope of finding the right candidate and then holding interviews. This certainly takes time, and you could enlist a recruiting agency to do this for you. However, it does mean that you will only get to see or hear about the individuals that they consider to be right for the role.
You should keep in mind that it is your business, and you and your current team that is going to be working with these new recruits. Therefore, finding someone who fits in with your way of work and the personalities already present is paramount for the well-being of your employees and the success of your business. Education, qualifications, and experience can all either be given or can come with time and training.
Final Note
That’s it – short and effective tips that can help you better prepare for that growing phase of your startup. If this has always been a nightmare to you, consider this as the help you need. Just follow them carefully and you will be all settled for that important phase of your business.