Increase Your Company’s Value Through Scalability

As an entrepreneur, you work incredibly long hours. I hear small business owners boasting about how much of their personal time is spent working in their businesses all the time. Likewise, many entrepreneurs rarely take vacations. And, if they do, they're typically checking in on the business at least once per day. But why are we killing ourselves by working so much? Didn’t we go into business to have more free time? Then, why can’t we take breaks without feeling guilty? It’s like the harder we work, the better off we’ll be.

Unfortunately, hard work isn’t the key to success. Without a doubt, we have to work hard to be successful. You’re definitely not going to reach success without some sweat equity, but there’s something more important. To make your business successful enough to sell it, your hard work must go into making your business scalable.

What does that mean? Simply put, scalability is the ability to grow your business. Growing your business doesn’t necessarily mean making it into a franchise and opening store fronts all over the nation or the world. How many companies actually do that? That’s not necessarily our goal.

Instead, the business growth I'm talking about in scalability revolves around revenue. In other words, how can you increase revenue and decrease the costs involved to produce that revenue? Essentially, how can you make profits high and costs low; how do you increase your margins? Remember, people buy businesses that make money, and scalable businesses typically bring larger price tags.

What Building Blocks Do You Need to Scale a Business???

Maybe your business is already making money. Perhaps it's booming, with great employees and exponential sales growth. That's great! But I’m assuming that you’re not content with where you are. After all, I've yet to meet a business owner who didn't want to make even more money and experience more growth. Fortunately, there’s no better time to invest your time, energy and passion into developing foundational systems that will help your business reach long-term success.

Recently, I read a parable in the Bible. You might know the one. In Matthew 7:24-27, Jesus talks about a man who built a house on sand and a man who built a house on rock. When the waves came, the floods washed the sand out from under the first man’s house, destroying everything he owned. But when the rain and floods beat upon the rock, the other man’s foundation withstood the waves.

This got me thinking of when my wife and I built our home. I was particularly fascinated by the laying of the house’s foundation. I watched the workers dig down to reach solid earth before they placed the footer and the piers. At times, they dug almost twelve feet into the ground before finding solid ground. After laying the base, the workers poured concrete and laid rebar and did everything that had to be done to give my house a firm foundation.

Just like a house, our business has to have a solid foundation. In business, that foundation is your business plan. But the building blocks of the foundation – the footer, the piers, the concrete, the rebar – are what make your business scalable. The following three things make a business scalable: Strong Management Systems, Scalable Product Solutions, and Strategic Thinking.

1. Management Systems??

Deep-rooted systems help us maximize our business growth so that we can make as much money as possible while minimizing growing pains. So when the storms of employee issues rush in or the gales of family issues flood our business world, we’ll have systems built to withstand the storms. These systems often come in the form of computer software programs specific to market industries. But management teams in your own company or teams you hire from another company can also function systematically. I’ve identified seven management systems I’ve used in my own companies that have dramatically increased their scalability.

• Customer Relationship Management System, a.k.a. CRM System – In order to get customers and keep them in your business, you should put a system in place that analyzes and manages your interactions with customers. This software, or this team, will collect data about your customers that includes their demographic information, what brought them to your business, what they’re buying from you, and how often they use you. The data alone doesn’t do anything for your business. You must have a team or a software program that can analyze the data with the goal of improving business relationships with customers, retaining customers, and up-selling to customers.

• Financial Management System – You also need a system to track where your money’s coming from and where it’s going. Basically, this is your record-keeping system for income and expenses. Some financial management systems have sister CRM systems that link and sync information. Other financial management software systems have CRM components built into their basic structure so that business owners can use one program to accomplish two tasks.

• Sales Management System – In this system, you’re going to need a team that knows how to use the data you collect from your CRM to turn prospects into actual customers. This system funnels clients from the wide “prospective client” mouth of the funnel to the narrow “actual client” part of the funnel to make the sale.

• Legal Management System – Ultimately, your business may delegate the operations of this system to a law firm as you grow. But you’ll need a computer program or a paper filing system in place to store your business agreements, contracts, correspondence, identifying information, tax records, and employment records, initially. However, you can’t just use the system for storage. You must have a team in place who can stay up-to-date and compliant with ongoing legal changes on local, state, and federal levels.

• Marketing Management System – Systems one through four focus on your current customers and financials, but this fifth system helps you reach new consumers. Once you review the demographics of your target market from your CRM, you can plan what type of media you need to use to reach the customer. Should you offer your products and services through social media, print advertising, radio announcements, or TV commercials? Have a program or team in place that can strategically get your product in front of your ideal customer.

• Talent Management System – Usually called “Employee Management Systems,” this system is how you find, hire, manage, and retain talented people. Without a good team in place, you won’t be able to reach your business goals. Moreover, you should have eyes on your talent four years out. Don’t look for good people in the spur of the moment; recruit purposefully and methodically.?
• Operational Management System – Finally, and most importantly, your operational system manages all the other systems. It’s the written documentation of how your company runs. Whether it’s as basic as a hand-written bubble graph on a yellow legal pad or as complicated as a programmed and editable flowchart, this outline details the systems you’ve put into place, who manages them, how they function, and the benefit they provide your company. This operational system is the way you can manage the company without being physically in the company.

2. Product Solutions??

When you first began your business, money was probably pretty tight. If I’m being candid, it often felt like I always had less than I needed when I first started. In addition to limited capital, your time and expertise are in constant demand.?

Implementing systems will take time and money, but this second building block will increase your business’s scalability without a lot of time or money. What I’m talking about is just taking a moment and identifying the things in your business that can be easily increased or reduced to maximize your business’s profitability and revenue.

So here are seven questions to ask yourself:

• What product/service do you offer that has the highest margins?

• Which product/service has the potential to reach double-digit growth rates?

• What product/service can your team easily explain to the marketplace?

• Which product/service can secure outside leverage?

• Is there a product/service that’s easy to market?

• What product/service can be automated?

• Can a product/service be franchised, licensed, or duplicated?

Your answers to the questions will show you how to take a product or service you offer and begin to scale it up. In other words, what you learn about your products will help you increase revenue and decrease costs. You now have scalable business solutions.

3. Mindset Shift Toward Scalability??

The third thing you have to do to make a scalable business is change your way of thinking. You’ve got to learn to think strategically. If you don’t know where you’re going, you won’t know what road to take to get there. As long as you have identified your business goals and written them down in a business plan, you should now be looking at ways to make your business more valuable than your competitors’ companies.

In order to build a plan for scalability, you must take the focus off of yourself in your business. For your company to attract buyers, it can’t be wholly dependent on you. You wouldn’t even be where you are in business if it weren’t for people around you. Take a step back to understand that you are building a business that can operate without you. Therefore, you AND your team must be successful together.

So how do you change your thinking?

• Let go of “This is Me” thinking. – You must turn the conversation of your business from “I” to “We.” Stop thinking, “I’m the business owner who started this.” Instead, start thinking, “We have an outstanding business.” Turn from “My” to “Our.” Go from “This is My” to “This is Our.” It’s a play on words you see, but it has such intrinsic meaning.

• Be the coach, not the star. – You didn’t become successful alone. Somewhere along the way, someone invested in your life. Maybe it was a family member, a friend, a pastor, a teacher, or a coach. Or maybe you read an inspirational book or blog post (perhaps, this one?) that changed your life’s direction. Inevitably, somebody in your life has dedicated or sacrificed time, money, and energy to help you. It’s time for you to do that now. If you’re going to build a scalable business, you have to be the coach. You have to cheer your team on to victory.

• Build the right team. – If you’re going to coach people to take over the everyday parts of your business, you have to hire the right people. Don’t look for “cheap talent.” If you get people who are less than your best, you’re going to get less than your best results. Hire the best people you can afford because great people yield great results.

• Get help. – Sure, you can run the company by yourself. For the most part, you know what you’re doing. But you’re still going to need somebody in your corner. You’re going to need encouragement and financial advice. You’ll need an objective person to point out your failures and motivate you to succeed. Whether it’s a professional like a CPA or CFP?, a family member or friend, or a board of advisers, you’re going to need help for yourself.

• Remember your family. – If you’re like most entrepreneurs, then you spend a lot of time building your business to the detriment of your family. You have to make time spent away from your family the exception, not the rule. If you’re going to build a scalable business, you’re going to have to walk away once you have all your systems in place. If you’ve become a stranger to your family and friends, what will you do? Who will be left with you when you reach success and have time to enjoy life?

Remember, the goal is building a business that can be sold. If you’re going to sell your company for top dollar, then it must be scalable. You must increase revenue and decrease the costs to produce that revenue in order to attract buyers and get the most money possible. Are you building a scalable business? If not, what’s stopping you??