How to slow down the growth of your business
Growing a business too fast can have a huge impact on your business and not always in a good way. If it is unexpected, you need to slow things down and buy time to think things through and shape your success. Here a few ideas of how to do it:
Create a wait list
When you have more people trying to buy your service than you can handle, you should create a ‘wait list’. Not only will it to hold people at bay until you are ready to deal with them, but it buys you some time to consider how you can handle them not just for now but in the future (how to structure your rapid growth so that your customer service does not let you down). When clients realise that demand is outstripping supply, I’m sure they would rather wait to work with you than lose the opportunity to ‘do’ business with you altogether! The fear of loss works in your favour.
Learn to say no!
When you have less time you’ll notice the customers who are demanding your time and attention are not always proving profitable, the ones who are energy zappers or negative and may upset you. You need to raise your prices. The ones that don’t like it and only buy based on price will naturally fall away and for any new clients, it stops the time wasters and ‘tyre kickers’. It means that those who will be buying from you are more discerning and are now a better ‘fit’ for you. Less is more. Less clients (but better paying clients) = more money, less angst and more profit.
Introduce KPI’s
Introduce KPI’s to measure and assess many aspects of your business before they could become a problem. Ensure that your business is running efficiently and profitably before growing any bigger. The introduction of KPI’s will help highlight any shortcomings or future issues and give you the chance to make changes before further growth.
Typical KPI’s may focus around improving efficiency, reducing costs, improving revenue and customer satisfaction.
Build Solid Foundations
Building solid foundations at an early stage is the most important and imperative thing to do to support the business going forward. Take time to make sure your processes, people, finance and product are sound before growing your business. If there are any gaps at this stage you have to reinforce your business foundations. Things can rapidly fall apart and will not be able to support your business when you need it. It is better to be pedantic now and think things through at the early stage, rather than trying to play catch up later!
Building a successful business takes time, effort and money, so don’t cut corners in the early days. If your business is growing too fast and you are unable to cope then scale it back and take control, slow it down or risk losing everything you have worked hard for. Controlled growth is better than no growth at all.
For more information please read: 5 top tips when growing your business
