Once upon a time, being able to go from rags to riches meant a) blagging your way into a Wall Street job, working your way up the corporate structure and then taking your little black book of contacts to go solo, b) landing in a huge pool of luck or c) getting yourself a Masters in Business Management and buddying up with a creative type.
But not anymore.
These days, growing what was once a small business into a household brand name is a million times easier, and it’s all thanks to the rise in technology, the internet, and processes. Becoming flexible enough to scale at the click of your fingers is a new phenomenon, but one that is changing the landscape of industries on a bi-yearly basis.
Of course, having the pieces of the puzzle is not enough. You need to know how they work together in order to make this happen and, more importantly, you need to have everything in place first. So, without further ado, here are the things every growing brand needs to have in place before they should really start to scale:
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Focus On The Customer
Sam Walton said it best when he said: There is only one boss, the customer, and he can fire everybody from the chairman on down by simply bringing his business somewhere else. It’s absolutely spot on. If you don’t have one eye on the customers experience every minute of the day, then you’ must be a little confused about why you are in business. To grow fast, you need to have as many excited and loyal fans as possible. Just look at Apple. They have got their brand so right that every product they release is a record-breaker within minutes. They know what their customers want and they give it to them.
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Make Sure You Are Flawless
Right now, any issues you might be facing are small. But the moment you start to grow, these little errors become bigger and bigger. That’s why you need to make sure all of your processes and products are absolutely perfect. Everything from the managed private cloud you are using to the products you are selling – it all needs to be flawless before you start to really push it onto people. You also need to have everything in place to fix any issues that do arise fast. When trouble hits, don’t get defensive, don’t point the finger and don’t pass the blame. Just do whatever it takes to fix it fast.
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Never Promise Too Much
As the boss, the leader, the person at the top, you no doubt pride yourself on striving for perfection. That’s what you want from yourself, your employees, your everyone. But don’t let this carry over to the client or customer. Perfection is the worst thing you can promise. When you’re trying to scale a high-volume business, it makes much more sense to make reasonable promises to your clients and customers and then over-deliver on that promise. That’s the sort of thing that encourages a happy surprise and that will make one-off buyers become loyal customers.
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