Trainings >> Stages and Ingredients of Business Growth >> 3.0 The Scale Up Stage
Ok, so now that we’ve looked at the Set Up and Grow Up stages of business, let’s tackle scaling up.
But, be careful:
Scaling up a business can easily go wrong and cause massive and abject failure – you’ve got to get it right, and that’s why I’m making this training.
Scaling up means you go from good to great.
From ticking over nicely, to profit and revenue numbers that constantly increase.
From “this machine runs itself to” “Let’s strap a turbo on it!”.
And for that kind of effect to take place, you fundamentally have three ways to scale up:
1: Expand: Introduce new products and services
Here, scaling up means working with past and current clients, and generating revenue from them by serving in new, additional, or complementary ways.
It’s a fantastic way to increase client loyalty as well as revenue, and:
If you add in cross-selling and 3rd party providers, you can make a killing just on referral payments, aside from what your new offers bring in.
2: Go vertical: open new marketing & sales channels
How many ways are there, to catch a fish?
If you’ve built a reliable lead generation strategy using direct outreach, you can try and automate part of the process by running ads.
Or if you’ve been landing clients by generating buzz on social media, you can add in content marketing and add a publishing arm to your business.
(A fantastic idea for authority positioning and thought-leadership, btw).
Or, if your marketing and sales are working, and you have excess capacity:
You can create revenue partnerships, where others bring you leads and referrals, and you pay a commission.
3: Go horizontal: enter new markets
This is usually the most tricky one to get right, because a new market means a whole new world of customer profiles to get familiar with.
(And to do that right, you need to go back to Stage 1: Set Up. Don’t ever think that a new market can be opened with the messaging and positioning that works for your primary market.)
But, when done right, the success you have with your primary demographic can be a great jumping-off point.
It enables you to generate the trust your new market needs to buy, based on the great testimonials and case studies you have from your primary market.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s chapter in the SIBG training:
How to scale up without stress and with minimal risk.
