SCALE UP
5 WAYS TO BUILD UP
YOUR BUSINESS
By Verne Harnish
1. DON’T BE MYOPIC ABOUT
MARKETING
Most entrepreneurial companies treat
marketing as glorified sales support.
Even worse, they fail to use it to crank
up the flow of qualified job applicants
they need to win. Take a cue from
one fast-growing company I know that
needed to lure workers physically fit
enough for trash collecting. It posted
ads in local gyms asking, “Would
you like to be paid for your workout?”
The fliers cost next to nothing, and
the owner found plenty of energetic
candidates.
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3. LOVE YOUR ACCOUNTANTS 5. INVEST IN SYSTEMS
Most entrepreneurs undervalue and
understaff their finance department,
viewing it as a necessary evil to keep
the tax collectors at bay, issue and
pay invoices, and provide monthly
accounting statements. Big mistake.
Hire a sophisticated pro who can
gather the granular data you need
to see where you’re making money
by product, customer, location, or
salesperson. It’s the quickest way to
double profits and cash flow in a year. Fast-growing firms need to upgrade
their infrastructure at three critical
points or their teams will get lost in
inefficiency: At 10 employees, you
need a better phone system; at 50,
sophisticated accounting software; and
at 350, a single database that links all
key information, so a simple change of
address by a customer doesn’t trigger
a cascade of mistakes. Procrastinating
on
this
will
kill
your
growth.
Trust me: Your most aggressive rivals
made these changes last year. u
2. FIGHT PROCESS PARALYSIS 4. TEACH YOUR PEOPLE WELL
Functions such as recruitment, billing,
and customer care are like hallway
closets. You have to clean them up
once in a while not just throw more
people at them so they don’t get
sloppy. Nurse Next Door, a home
health care provider in the U.S.
and Canada, found that its payroll
and billing accountant was working
weekends before it streamlined her
workflow. That saved her a good 20
hours a week. Now the firm teaches
the same pared-down approach to its
franchisees. If you want the company to grow by
a factor of 10, you need 10 times
the leadership skills among your
key people. They’ll need to excel at
predicting where the market is heading,
communicating the company’s values,
goals, and priorities and delegating
successfully to their teams. Give
them time away from the fray to
attend the conferences, classes, and
seminars they need to make a bigger
contribution so you don’t have to pay
for their on-the-job mistakes.
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FALL 2018
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