You need to grow your business and your mind is full of ideas! And full of doubts too. No problem. The website Small Business Trends asked the entrepreneurs community Young Entrepreneur Council which factors can’t go unnoticed in a situation like yours. Here are the best tips to help you build a great strategic planning, make your business more profitable and your team, proud.
1. Save the company culture
“With each new addition to your team, the camaraderie and company culture will inevitably change. It’s important to not overlook your company culture but instead have a plan to foster and develop the initial spirit as the numbers grow. After all, besides the revenue, the diversity of temperaments grows too and – why not? – new and interesting values can be added to the company culture.”
Kim Kaupe, ZinePak
2. Create a knowledge management
“A small company often captures its working knowledge in the minds of its early employees. As a result, you may struggle to educate new hires, and some people may have a disproportionate amount of power or responsibility simply because of what they know (rather than what they can do). To grow smoothly, be disciplined about documenting your best practices and sharing them with your team.”
AJ Shankar, Everlaw, Inc.
Define clear roles
“It’s imperative to clearly define each person’s role and maybe each person’s goal in the company, especially when you start to grow. This includes creating a hierarchy not to rise bottlenecks – because the demands are shared informally between teams – nor delays, because priorities change all the time.”
Andrew Thomas, SkyBell Video Doorbell
Value the continued scalability
“We recently updated a number of our processes and the structures within our company simply because a lot of what we had in place works today, but would not be appropriate or even feasible with four times the number of employees. For instance, we found that how we all share stories about the weekend in a roundtable format would not work when 30 people were at the table.”
Beck Bamberger, BAM Communications
Don’t overlook cash flow
“Balance the money that comes in with the money you are spending to grow. As Warren Buffet says: “Cash or available credit is like oxygen: you don’t notice it 99.9 percent of the time, but when absent, it’s the only thing you notice.”
Kevin Henrikson, Acompli
Adopt management tools
“When the company is small, a lot of tasks are done manually. As the business grows and gains clients, a lot of internal processes should be improved and also measured. This is only possible with tools that let staff focus on what is strategic, without worrying about tasks a system solves by itself or after a few clicks.”
Randy Rayess, VenturePact
Measure your customers’ happiness
“As your company grows and you bring on more new business, it’s important to remain steadfast in your focus on existing customer happiness. We monitor this through tracking net promoter score and customer retention. This metric gives us a good indicator of whether the business is scaling appropriately or needs, for instance, a technology to deal with its growth.”
Ryan Wilson, FiveFifty
Evaluate the team performance
“When you’re making money, everyone’s work seems to be good and getting the job done. But sometimes what seems like ‘getting the job done’ is actually a market run that overlooks mistakes. Those same mistakes can come back to haunt you when that market slows unless you have consistently worked with your team to ensure that they are always operating at their best. This can be done through regular performance evaluations.” A management software can make it easier.
Rahim Charania, American Fueling Systems
Celebrate the little wins
“It’s easy to get sucked into the mentality of looking forward to the next big obstacle, especially when you’re leading a startup. But it’s very important for the morale of your company to stop and celebrate the little wins. Creating some sort of tradition — whether it’s champagne or ringing a gong — will help give your team perspective and prevent burnout in the long run.”
Mattan Griffel, One Month
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