Chances are, unless your business was one of the fortunate few whose services were called upon in the Covid crisis, you’ve had to totally revamp your strategy to survive.
As the UK has moved on into lockdown 3.0 with a vaccine shining a light at the end of the tunnel, chances are you’re now really looking to scale quickly when freedoms are resumed and make profit again.
However, at this point it’s crucial not to forget to factor in strategising for how to maintain and adapt your company to be ready to receive your future success. To ensure that you sustain growth when you begin to scale requires a different kind of strategy. Too much success without being prepared, can turn a positive scenario into a stressful one that you’ll definitely want to avoid. Here’s some essential tips to get your mind whirring on how to ensure the best occurs…
Preparing your team for growth and the c word: change
As much as seeing more money coming in is exciting and a relief, when the bottom line starts to go up you may see a surprisingly negative reaction from your team – many people are actually afraid of success, instead viewing it as change.
You can help to combat this fear and instead turn it into mini milestones by communicating massively the benefits of what it would mean to each of them. Being precise about how their exact role may alter, if indeed it does and what each stage of the change means for them. Use your line manager’s to help get everyone on board and work through each staff member’s fears or trepidations. You need to manage their expectations. If training is needed do it in plenty of time – it’s a natural confidence booster because it says to your team member ‘hey, you’re worth it’. You need to both boost their confidence and their belief that they can handle it and it will be for the better. If you’re uncertain where to begin there are many fantastic change coaches out there who you can contact to work with you.
Ensure your website works hard for you and save your entire team hours of time
Communication on your website or touch-points with consumers can really save you a gargantuan portion of time. Whether it’s going over the customer journey to ensure that it’s quick and smooth with punchy calls to action on every page willing them to convert, to making sure the checkout works easily so that customers are less likely to contact you with issues. If you’ve been trading long enough to have a bank of customer questions in your inbox, instead of rolling your eyes at them, use them as feedback and update the wording on your site to cover any ambiguities. If you haven’t got time for a full re-write, then pull them together into a set of frequently asked questions, then promote the fact that they’re there to boost customer experience across all your marketing channels. You could perhaps write a post about each one and that’s a whole month of content done.
Testing, testing, testing …
Anything new whether it’s a new product launching or an app update. Ensure the flow of scalability by testing vigorously on all types of media. Phones, both android and Apple, tablets, laptops and desktops all need to be checked … and then double checked.
Suppliers feed demand so prepare and iron out any kinks in your external processes
Your new strategy launch dates can be planned in by working backwards in the diary with suppliers. If you’re finding it tricky to work out the timing, what with both Covid restrictions on production and travel coupled with the lack of clarity of goods movement and Brexit? Perhaps now is the time to consider switching suppliers or at least adding backup ones to your product offering.
Anticipating any random issues from your potential or existing customers
This is essential to do from the customer perspective and from your own internal processes. Ask each member of your team to spend ten minutes every day mulling this one over and forming their own lists. You can then go over any of their fears for how the uplift in growth might rock the boat and work to prevent or navigate you way around it. Avoidance of issues is again key …
Read more:
5 tips to ensure you create a growth strategy that boosts ongoing scalability
