Be Ready: How To Cope With High-Speed Startup Growth

Most entrepreneurs start their businesses in the hope they’ll grow as fast as possible. However, fast growth is often overrated, as two-thirds of the fastest growing companies end up failing. Furthermore, a study by California State University revealed that businesses that had wild income growth performed worse than their slow-growing counterparts in the long run.

The reasons behind this vary, but we can assume that the complexity of the period of growth and leading the operations on a higher scale, can be too much of a burden for many beginners in the unpredictable market.

While fast growth is not always easy to handle, taking a proactive and gradual approach could make it easier to manage and endure. Here are some tips that will help you with that.

#1 Detect Fast Growth

Before you start envisioning your strategy, you need to identify growth, because it is not always easily detected. It sometimes hides in weaknesses, mistakes, and deficiencies. Here are four clues to look for:

• Operational inefficiencies caused by large orders, small premises, and being understaffed.
• Increased demand for the product or service you are offering. This can cause problems with invoices and cash flow.
• You are getting a lot of customers’ complaints, particularly because their orders are not arriving on time, etc.
• You struggle to keep up with the hours and employees.

#2 Analyze Where You Are & Where You Want To Be

A growth diagnosis of your business should include how you are managing your company and controlling the operations right now. Essentially, it is the analysis of your sales, capital, inventory, assets, cash flow, and the overall company culture. After this, you will be able to establish some goals regarding hiring, expansion, the efficiency of the product line, and eventually relocation.

#3 Predict Cash Requirements

The previously done cash flow analysis will help you establish whether you will need additional financing for your future projects and general sustainability. Lacking sufficient capital is one of the biggest mistakes small businesses make when handling their growth, so try to keep an eye on everything ranging from clients deferring payments to potential business loans which could ease the expansion. Refinancing is another option to consider.

#4 Control Costs & Debts

Growth may motivate bing spending, but this is all the more reason to maintain a vigilant control over all the costs including rent, paychecks, and office supplies. Paying off loans and debts to vendors will take up a chunk of your budget, but if you do everything on time, you will remain a reliable client for the future.

#5 Delegate The Responsibilities

Being at the helm of a business that is growing way too fast puts too many responsibilities on one’s shoulders. By now, you might have found it natural to make all the decisions on your own, but as you will have bigger fishes to fry, you need to be able to delegate certain low and mid-range tasks to your staff, because you will not be able to oversee everything. Of course, you need to make sure that you are handling the torch to responsible and trustworthy managers.

#6 Keep The Lines Of Communication Open

All the employees, particularly those with higher status, need to be up to speed with what is going on in the company. Any communication noise could lead to mistakes in judgment and delay in the operations. Fortunately, today there are many project management systems which can ease the communication and provide the decision-making transparency that will keep the business running smoothly.

#7 Even In Times Of Turmoil, Customers Come First

The customers, especially the repeating ones, can sense when something is changing in your business. If the changes impact their experience negatively, they will think twice before they bring you to profit once again.

Similarly like with maintaining your operations, communication is the key for keeping your customers satisfied. There is a wide range of options and tools which can help you with this, including online forums, social media, live chat, satisfaction surveys, and SMS text support. Use these channels to get valuable feedback, as well.

#8 Seek Council

If you have never been in a situation like this before, how will you know how to get out of it alive? Of course, you can take a leap and wait for what will happen, but don’t be surprised if you fall right on your head. Instead, you can seek advice from experienced and qualified mentors from your industry.

If you don’t know such a person, you can always hire a consultant firm or look for him/her on micromentor.org, which is a free community of volunteer mentors.

Conclusion

Growth is on the top of every business owner wish list, but if not handled properly, it can bring you troubles and even failure. Let these tips guide you through this hectic period and to the group of the lucky one-third of businesses which have dealt with high-speed growth successfully.

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