Some small and medium-sized business is fortunate enough to experience success overnight. For them, such an unexpected success is a completely new experience and gives them an entirely new landscape to navigate into. Your customers suddenly want your product or your service and cannot get enough of it.

The supply lines and logistics are unable to handle the new demand as they were never ready for it. Businesses that want to reach immediate success are like to stay aware of the possibilities. A wide expansion in a short time can leave a company disoriented finally resulting in unsatisfied customers.

So what is the formula to stay prepared for such an overnight success..?

Here are some of the approaches suggested by some industry experts that can help you stay prepared for the immediate success you are planning your business to achieve.

These are members of the Young Entrepreneur Council who have discussed how a business can scale up to meet its customers’ demands when it attains a sudden success that bring the business into a spotlight.

Develop Process which is Repeatable and Predictable

Alexander Young, from Virti, says that the company scaled up to 1000% in the period of eight months. The journey was pretty exciting for the entire team. However, keeping up with the market demands meant scaling up the team, infrastructure, and the businesses processes in a short span of time. Young states that the best advice that he received was, scaling needed all the processes were in place, were repeatable, and were predictable before the team was scaled aggressively.

The start-up companies can find it difficult to invest time to write down the processes in a way that is easy to understand. Also, it must be considered that, if you are explaining things more than once, you need a process which is driven by and is documented through data which revolves around your business.

Business Boundaries are Important

Scaling is all amount playing with the limits up to which the company can expand. Samuel Thimothy, from OneIMS, states that you should be well aware of the extent u to which you can spend money or time on your new resources. It is important to consider that the number of staff members that you can hire at the same time you are maintaining and updating your product quality and cost. What is the organizational manufacturing capacity of the product or the service you are delivering to the customer? How much demand your business can accommodate before the operational costs go out of the control? It is also important for you to reconsider your logistical options.

You must answer all these questions before you make a decision on how to reach the new set of buyers. Regardless of what the insights and the results are, it is important that you are honest with your customers. There may be times when they will come to know that the business is generating new demands in the market. It is important that they are aware of the situation and are not made false promises. Staying loyal is important to retain their trust for your company.

Build your Team

Lisa Collum, from Top Score Writing, says that when you reach the stage where the company starts to grow rapidly, and you need to scale it quickly, it becomes important to do certain things, building a team or outsourcing one is the option that needs to be considered here. Your business can outsource a set of some specific tasks or products while you start to build a team. It is believed that outsourcing products or services are way cheaper than carrying out these tasks within the team.

At the same time spend some efforts and time to build the team as it is said that you to need the right team at the right time to deliver the services and product to your customers to achieve the desired goals.

Manage and Monitor your Finances

Healthy and firm financial backup is important before you scale your business. Check and reconsider the health of your finances. If you are not sure you will be able to sustain the rush, it is recommended that you find an investor. Changing the focus to meet the new goals is also an option.

For instance, if you are planning to capture new customers, you can think about retaining the older ones. If you are planning to grow your business, you do not need to focus on bringing new customers, retaining the customers is a better approach in this case.

Leverage Business Partnership  

As per Charles Bogoian, from Kenai Sports, sudden business growth is sometimes difficult to manage by most of the small and medium-sized companies. Business complications may arise at the start-up is sometimes not really ready for sudden and unexpected growth. At this time, the start-ups must focus on leveraging their partnerships as much as possible. These can be business dealings in areas such as order fulfilment, material procurement, digital marketing, customer service, and some other things.

Start-up teams need to remember that the “make versus buy” decisions can evolve over time. The thing that matters the most is, your business is able to endure the stress of the supply chain caused by the demand and deliver processes as your customer base grows.

Develop Business Networks

Bryce Welker, CPA Exam Guy, says that achieving a sudden success is like getting struck by lightning. It happens rarely, and it leaves you confused. One of the best approaches is to reach out and develop networks with some of the most popular people in the industry. The best part is, the chances of them replying to you are higher. Once you are in regular communication with them, it is recommended to maintain your momentum and set up further growth opportunities once your sudden success starts to wear off. This is vital as it will help you to retain your customers and stop them into jumping to a different market trend.

Process Automation

Terry Tateossian, from Socialfix Media, states that automation is one of the most significant parts of scalability. It offers a streamlined approach to the business operational processes. As you invest more and more towards technology, it will be easier for you to scale your company.

Tateossian also says that on one of the overlooked aspect of scaling quickly is hiring and scaling the employees. The activity can be a significant drawback when the team needs specialization or when the employees need to learn to work with some of the most technically advanced tools in the market. At such a time, digital media such as YouTube can be a great help.

Core Competencies to          

Giving emphasis on the core competencies is one of the best ways to quickly scale your business. The approach will help to meet the current market demands. It is also recommended to embrace the technologies that can make your work easier and stress-free.

Managing the right team is also important as hiring random people and training them as per the new business processes can be complicated. Instead, the focus should be to use the existing team members at the best of their potential to manage the changes. Having the right resources is important before your business scales to an unexpected number.

Competitor Partnerships

Competitors are not always your weaknesses. Firas Kittaneh, from Zoma Mattress, says that it is wise to develop businesses partnerships with other brands in your industry. Some of these businesses are willing to lend a hand to your business with the belief that at some point in time, your business will be at a better position to return the favour later.

Competitors might suggest you ways to optimize your supply chain methods, introduce you to the new vendors, or even advise on how to handle customer service during the unexpected spike in the sales. They will also help you in providing additional resources so that you do not have to struggle through the unexpected growth alone.

Source – Forbes