Whether you’re a builder expanding to a new region, a remodeler opening a design center, or a home service provider opening a second location - scaling your built environment business is an exciting time. You have the vision, passion, and success at your current size. How can you achieve revenue growth to support your vision for the next phase?
Growing vs. Scaling
The business world is fixated on growth. Even established national brands are expected to grow year over year. However, there is another way to increase revenue for your company, and that is through scaling.
The most common distinction between scale and growth in business is the incurring costs. When a company grows intending to increase revenue, it also adds resources, staff, technology, and capital. To grow, you are adding significant overhead to help the revenue happen.
Scaling, however, utilizes ways to increase revenue without incurring costs to expand your business. In general, scaling aims to achieve revenue growth at a significantly faster rate than the rate of increase of resources and expenses.
Revenue Operations tools, such as dashboards, are the most direct way to help identify scalable opportunities and measure results.
Business leaders and entrepreneurs in the built environment know there is no such thing as overnight success. The building industry requires you to think long-term and strategically and have the resources to strike when opportunities arise. The mindset of scaling your business vs. simply growing your business is the best route to success and lowers your risk of investing too quickly in overhead expenses.
The right systems will give you the most flexibility in your scale-up phase leading to optimum growth potential.
Scaling is where the value is.
According to Mckinsey, two-thirds of the value created in the new-business building is made in the scale-up phase. Those who scale successfully, reportedly only 22% of startups, consider how scaling will impact their organization before the strategy is in motion.
Business Goals
Your business goals and desired outcome, both short and long-term, should be factored into your scale strategy. You can identify where to invest your resources when you break down your outcome goals into actionable steps.
For example, if your business goal is to have a quicker response time in your warranty service, instead of hiring staff to address the demand to achieve that departmental goal, you could implement a follow-up program through a CRM. You could equip your team with an automated ticketing system. On your website or in an automated email campaign, you could have an if/then form that responds and creates tasks for follow-up, all of which can be viewed in a dashboard.
Team Organization
Scaling a company requires change, and change is hard. Does your current staff have the mindset and potential to help your business scale? How can you empower your team to handle a different or expanded workload without adding additional staff?
Implementing a shift in strategy may upend the day-to-day operations and job requirements. Prepare your team with milestones and training resources. Set expectations and redefine your company’s policies and procedures.
Incorporating revenue operations technology and engaging skilled leaders in the buy-in can help tremendously. Dashboard reporting and transparent expectations can motivate and keep accountability to meet your business goals.
Tech Stack
Moving your sales, customer service, and operations into one system or a single “source of truth” is vital to scale your built environment business.
As much as possible, incorporate repeatable, day-to-day tasks into automated, standardized workflows.
For example, suppose your accounting department manually tracks unpaid invoices. Instead of your team sending collection emails or calling past-due payments, you could integrate your accounting software with your CRM and create automated emails to send at your desired past-due increments.
You can easily see payment reports and make decisions with custom dashboards and the right supporting tech. Now your accounting team has more capacity to handle your increase in revenue or business. You’ve added time without adding staff.
Responsive dashboards and other revenue reporting metrics will give you real-time access to the information your team needs through consolidated reporting. One point of truth allows your reports to focus on critical indicators and trends and identify gaps and strengths.
Scaling with Outside Resources
Businesses, especially startups, often rely on a core team to facilitate multiple roles. Your warranty department and production department might be the same personnel. Your sales leader might also be your marketing leader. This stress on your team might inhibit your changes to scale successfully.
To prevent your team from becoming burned-out generalists, utilizing outside resources on a project basis will offer flexibility and bandwidth versus the cost of adding a full-time worker. Upwork states, “ Creating a variable cost for talent enables you to free up cash, boost productivity, and increase agility. All of which expands your capabilities to serve customers better and meet business goals.”
For example, if your business goal is to increase leads from your website, you don’t have the personnel to manage that function. Instead, you seek outside resources to address your company’s online chat tool. You receive reports in your dashboard, transcripts of conversations, and leads added to your CRM. You can quickly adjust if your business goal is not being met by the company you’ve outsourced.
Scaling with Dashboards
As you scale your business, you must maximize your efficiency as a leader and for your decision-makers. When you once knew every homesite or job status by heart, your oversight and involvement might change. This is where dashboards are advantages for your business operations.
Dashboards provide at-a-glance visibility for your team to read and interpret data. You no longer wait for department reports or check-in meetings; you have the info you need to track progress and make instantaneous decisions.
The free flow of information a dashboard provides also helps track performance. You don’t have to wait months to see if goals are being met or if there are performance concerns. A dashboard offers the clarity and transparency you need to scale your business without adding costly resources.
Scaling a business means making adjustments in your efficiencies and strategic operations. Knowing the parameters of your current staff and resources and incorporating revenue operations to increase revenue without adding overhead at the same rate takes planning specific short-term and long-term goals.
Illumine8 is here to help you scale your business with confidence. From implementing dashboards to conducting tech stack audits, we have the know-how to help your team and company succeed in today’s built environment.
