Anyone can start a business these days. The barriers to entry are incredibly low and you can go from idea to full-fledged company in a matter of hours. But there’s a difference between launching a business and growing one. If you want to achieve rapid growth, you must pay attention to the details.
5 Things You Can Do to Scale Your Biz Like the Big Guys
While no two businesses are the same, the underlying principles of growth tend to be fairly consistent from one organization or industry to the next. And if you want to enjoy rapid growth, you should take a page out of the book of other fast scaling companies and implement the following principles and tactics:
- Pursue Radical Innovation
According to researcher Joe Glavin, high-growth companies are 39 percent more likely to develop new processes to improve their existing products and services. But it goes much further than this.
“High-growth companies are also 37 percent more likely to rely on radical innovations — the kinds of breakthroughs that give the world something it’s not seen before,” Galvin writes. “Risky? Maybe. Rewarding? Definitely: They are 50 percent more likely to provide new products and services, and 58 percent more likely to develop patentable technologies.”
It’s not always easy – and most new ideas will fail – but a long-term commitment to innovation will eventually yield fruit. And that fruit tends to be a whole lot juicer than the low-hanging type that most companies focus on.
- Invest in People
Products and services – no matter how innovative – will only get you so far. If you don’t have the right people on your team, you’ll never make it.
Most businesses start with an idea or product and then hire people to complement that product. But the better approach may be to invest in people and then pursue innovation. After all, people are the lifeblood of radical innovation and growth.
Start by getting very clear on who you want to work for your company. Create a shortlist of traits, skills, and values that you deem important. From there, you can begin the process of finding, vetting, and onboarding people who align with your growth-oriented vision.
- Invest in Link Building
It’s impossible to grow in today’s business world without emphasizing your digital presence or online brand. And link building is one of the best kept secrets for success.
Link building isn’t cheap, but it’s one of the primary driving factors in improving search rankings, scaling website traffic, and ultimately filling the top of your funnel so that you have more conversions at the bottom.
While you can technically do it on your own, companies like Link.Build make it easy by providing white glove, white label link building services that generate noteworthy results over time.
- Wow With Customer Service
The best companies in the world – or the fastest growing at least – emphasize customer service as part of their value proposition. They do more than just go through the motions – they blow people away.
Zappos is a classic example of this. Early on (and still today), the company would encourage people to contact them with anything they needed, and were known for following through. Former Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh was so proud of his company’s ability to wow people with customer service that he once dared a friend to call the Zappos customer service line and order pizza. The customer service was confused, but she obliged.
You don’t have to take things that far, but it shows how important it is to wow people with every interaction. Whether they’re approaching you with a problem, concern, or praise, it’s your job to make sure they walk away feeling like you care. One thing you can do to ensure that your customers feel heard and understood is to outsource a call centre to the Philippines or a company that could assist you in handling your customers’ concerns. It’s important to have customer representatives who can connect with your customers and feel empathy to their needs.
- Implement Data-Driven Decision Making
Businesses are swimming in data these days. And whether you realize it or not, you have access to rich information that can help you move the needle on growth. But to excel, you have to do more than collect data. You actually need to implement the insights that you uncover.
Develop a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) and tie them into specific elements of your strategy. As you notice significant changes in the data, you can adjust your strategy to reflect the new information that you’ve unearthed.
Push Your Business to the Next Level
Growth is something that all businesses want, but few are able to achieve (at least not at the pace that they would like). However, if you’re willing to implement the right building blocks, you can scale at a rate that’s much faster than the average. Using the tips outlined in this article, begin formulating your plan. It might not be perfect, but you can iterate as you go.
