A lot of business owners make one common mistake when it comes to growing their business, which is trying to make their companies grow without scaling them first. In order to successfully grow your company, you need to scale it properly.
Business growth is about adding more resources at the same rate that you are generating more revenue. For instance, you get new clients and engage in new projects, so you hire more employees to help you finish your projects faster. What this does for your company is add more costs at the same rate that you are increasing your revenue. Therefore, your business is clearly growing, but it is definitely not scaling.
Scaling, on the other hand, means adding more revenue at an increased rate, while adding resources at a slower rate. That way, you are not increasing your overhead costs at the same pace that you are growing your revenue, so you are able to generate more revenue over time and successfully and consistently grow your business. Here are some tips for properly scaling your project-based business that you will certainly find very useful.
Find Managers with Good Emotional Intelligence
Why is emotional intelligence important? Because managers need to motivate people and push them to work harder, and the only way they can achieve that is to truly understand them. True leaders need to understand the people that they are working with in order to know how to help them improve and complete their tasks in the best possible way, without making them overwhelmed and burned out.
Managers who are able to empathize with employees are able to empower them and motivate them to keep advancing and become more productive. On the other hand, those who lack emotional intelligence don’t really know how to work with people as a team, so they eventually decrease people’s productivity and efficiency. All the skills and expertise that they may have don’t really matter if they are not leading people the right way.
This is why you need to make sure that you hire managers with good emotional intelligence because, otherwise, your employees will end up feeling discouraged and dissatisfied at work and they will not be able to showcase their true talent and reach their maximum potential.
Outsource the Menial Tasks and Focus on Core Activities
Every business has a lot of menial tasks on a daily basis but, although each and every one of them is necessary for a seamless workflow, they tend to be very time-consuming and, if we are being completely honest, often quite boring. Not only can completing those tasks take plenty of your time, but it can also shift your focus from your core activities, which is something that you certainly cannot afford.
This is why you should consider outsourcing those menial tasks. Taking that step will take the load off your back, so you can focus on your core competencies and effectively work on your goals. Hiring someone full-time would significantly increase your costs, while outsourcing would get you the expertise you need but perhaps cannot afford, and it would provide you with great flexibility if a particular project doesn’t work out and your workflow slows down.
Build up Your Brand Awareness through Social Media
Raising brand awareness is an essential step for scaling your project-based business, and any other business, for that matter. One of the best ways to quickly build up your brand awareness is to become active on social media, because social media enables you to extend your reach globally and attract a large number of new clients.
However, in order to effectively do so, you need to understand your target audience and determine which platforms they actually prefer to use, so that you don’t waste time and effort on showing off your business to people who are not really interested in what you do.
Therefore, find your target market, develop an effective social media marketing plan, and start creating a memorable experience for your followers. If you communicate with them on a personal level and show that you are actually one of them, they will trust you more and become your brand advocates.
Create a Comprehensive Training Program
What would be the point of trying to scale and grow your business if your employees are not properly trained to do their jobs? You need to make sure that your entire workforce is able to fully contribute to your company, and developing a comprehensive training program is the only way to achieve that.
Providing your employees with proper training will enable them to significantly improve their knowledge, skills and abilities necessary for performing their jobs effectively. Facilitating learning and development will result in a strong workforce and much higher levels of efficiency and productivity, as well as improved morale, motivation and job satisfaction. Therefore, not only will it improve your overall business, but it will also reduce employee turnover.
Allocate Tasks Based on a Clearly Defined Workflow
Allocating tasks can be a bit challenging when dealing with complex projects, which is why you should have a clearly defined workflow first. What you can do to manage your projects easily is create task dependencies, because they will let everyone know what and when they are supposed to do, so that they don’t need to wait for someone to finish particular tasks before they can start working on their assigned tasks.
This way, everyone can keep track of the progress and collaborate effectively, so no time or resources will ever be wasted. Everything will be done in a particular order and your activities will always run smoothly.
By taking all of the aforementioned steps, you will be able to quickly scale your project-based business and grow your company, so start applying these tips right now. Before you even know it, you will start generating more revenue, without actually increasing your overhead costs, so you will have many more opportunities for innovation and improvement that will push your business towards stellar success.