What is scalability in a corporate context? Investopedia describes a scalable company as "one that can maintain or improve its profit margins while sales volume increases."
Achieving scalability in a business, then, will be the holy grail for many entrepreneurs. However, as a business owner yourself, you will need to prepare a number of ingredients before you can, ahem, 'whisk' them into a scalable mixture - such as by doing the following...
Avoid stocking up too much on physical inventory
At any one time, the lower the amount of inventory your company has, the less you would need to spend on overheads.
For example, you would be able to reduce the amount of warehousing you need. Your company can therefore free up resources and redirect them for use in spurring the growth of the business itself.
Familiarize yourself with your customers
Through engaging with these customers, such as on social media and through holding surveys, you can learn more about what these customers' problems are.
You need to focus on how you can solve these problems. Growth Business notes: "While this may seem obvious, it's one of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs make."
Keep your branding efforts consistent
To do this, you should make sure all of your workers know your brand's mission and how the company pursues it.
If there is confusion amongst these workers about your company's journey, target customers could end up receiving mixed messages - and, as a result, doubting your brand's integrity.
Implement scalable communication technology
Naturally, it is important that you respond promptly to customer enquiries lest the customers who sent them are left waiting an uncomfortably long time and eventually decide to approach competitors of your company.
However, as you also ideally don't want to spend more on communications than is necessary, you could ask a telecoms firm like Gamma to provide you with a customer contact centre that would be easy to scale.
Work on penetrating more of your company's existing target market
It's easy to assume that the key to corporate growth is to launch new businesses. However, an analysis of US venture-capital data has revealed that, on the contrary, an entrepreneur can more easily create value by scaling up an existing business.
Through doing this with your own company, you can garner custom from a large share of its target market.
Assess your company at each level
That way, you will be able to track how far your business is progressing towards its corporate goals. You will also be able to monitor how efficiently the company is using its resources. Remember that, in making your company more financially streamlined, you can also make it scalable.
Foster positive publicity for your business
Bill Gates once commented: "If I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on public relations."
Through using PR, you can give both customers and the media reasons to share positive words about your business. You can make your marketing messages especially relatable by weaving human stories into them.
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