Your business is growing. Sales are increasing, and your demand has never been higher. This is awesome, and you should take a moment to congratulate yourself. Many entrepreneurs would be jealous of your position.
Before celebrating for to long, you need to prepare yourself to handle the growth. Believe it or not, growing too rapidly can actually cause a business to fail if it is not prepared to scale properly. You have to take steps to handle your growth in a sustainable way or else you could lose everything.
There are some common things that business owners need to consider as their businesses start to take off. These questions can help you to prepare for the future of your business. The following are things to ask yourself when your business is growing.
1. Are you Keeping Track of Financials Properly?
Small business owners can sometimes be bad about tracking their financials. You can get away with this when your business is small. However as your business grows larger, not tracking your financials properly can spell disaster, especially with the IRS.
Understanding the basics of bookkeeping and accounting is essential to understanding your business. You need to know these things to determine profitability, future investments, and tax calculations. If your business is truly growing quickly, then you also need to consider bringing on a CPA to help shoulder the load.
2. Do you Need to Bring on New Employees?
As demand for your business grows, you may need to bring on new employees to handle that demand. Hiring employees is an essential part of strategic growth. Early on in the company’s life, be very thorough in your hiring process. You want someone who will be there to stay through the “ups and downs” of the business. It’s worth it to wait longer for the perfect new hire than to hastily choose a candidate and regret it later on.
The wrong hire can be disastrously costly to a small business. So, you need to make sure you are screening for adequately qualified candidates only. If you run into trouble trying to find the right employee, then you might consider reaching out to a recruiting agency. For example, if you work with medical devices, then you might consider partnering with a company that is specialized as medical device recruiters.
3. Do you Need to Invest in a Human Resources Department?
When a business is small, it really does not make sense to invest heavily in Human Resources. However as you bring on more staff, it becomes important that you do this. You may consider bringing on an HR professional and using a Human Resource Information System (HRIS).
What is an HRIS? An HRIS is a software solution for human resource management. It can help track data that is important to managing your employees effectively, such as birthdays, pay rates, benefits, and more. This can be extremely helpful as your company grows larger and more complicated.
4. Are you Providing Good Customer Service?
Sometimes when a business is growing quickly, customer service starts to suffer. You are handling more and more sales inquiries, and you simply do not have time to be on the phone with existing customers. If you start to provide poor customer service, then this can really hurt you in the long run.
You want your customers to be happy and satisfied with your services. You need to answer and remedy their concerns quickly and professionally. If you are having trouble keeping up with customer service, then it may be time to bring on an employee who understands the keys to good customer service.
It is vitally important that you strategically prepare your business for growth. More sales and more demand are very good things, but you have to be ready to handle them. Failure to be ready for growth can cause your entire business to fail. Ask yourself these questions about your business as you move forward.