When you start a new business, those first few months you are focused on making sure all operations are running smoothly and attracting customers, but you need to be thinking about the future too.

You should always have a plan for growth. This is separate from your day-to-day responsibilities as a business owner. Think of it as your long term plans.

Here is a Business Owner’s Guide to Planning for Growth in 2019 to help.

Scalability of Your Business

Even before you solidify all your plans to open your business, you should already be asking if your business is scalable. If you see a lot of growth potential for your business, choose a business name that can encompass other areas of interests you might want to expand in later. For example, starting an entertainment business instead of just a dance studio.

Managing Business Growth

Another thing you need to think about is how are you going to handle all the growth when it starts to happen? You need to be constantly looking at your processes and figuring out what can be streamlined, delegated, automated or outsourced so you can handle any influx of new customers or new work without any hiccups.

Protect Your Business Name and Intellectual Property

It might not seem like a big deal when you are first starting out, but protecting your business name and intellectual property is paramount so that no one takes advantage of all your hard work. The earlier you do it, the better. Contact a patent law attorney to find out the process of applying for a patent or trademark.

Really Get to Know Your Customer Base

In the beginning of any business, you need to devote a majority of your time to marketing and recruitment strategies, but once you get busy with a lot of customers, there is less and less time for it. Getting and keeping customers, however, will always be a priority so it is important that you really get to know your customer base.

Put together the statistics to describe your target customer from your customer database so who you should focus your marketing and recruitment strategies on. Also, distribute surveys to these customers so you can find out what you do well and what you might need to work on.

Other tips for staying connected to your customers include:

• Make a point to check in on your customers on a regular basis. Set up a schedule so you never forget.
• Create a plan for how to recruit new target customers, whether through social media, email, direct mail or all strategies.

Build a Reliable Process for Accounts Receivable

One indicator of a successfully growing business is that everything seems to work like clockwork no matter how busy you get. For this to happen, you need systems in place that are reliable but are flexible enough to adapt as you grow.

For example, you will need a streamlined process for accounts receivable so daily tasks like accepting and reconciling payments will not pile up. Use technology to your advantage so you free up more time in your day to devote to the bigger picture.

Make It Easier to Buy Your Products and Services

Everyone is online this days so it is important that you not only have an online presence yourself through a website and social media, but that you also make it easy for your customers to buy your products and services online. They will love having flexible options to choose from and it frees up more time for you and your staff.

When Hiring, Motivation Is More Important Than Experience

When you are hiring new employees, it is important that they have the right attitude to succeed in a growing business. While skill and experience are important, an employee who is passionate and willing to learn is what you need the most.

You also need to think about what type of work culture you want to promote and take that into considering when interviewing applicants. For example, if volunteerism and community activism are a big part of what your business stands for, then you will want to hire employees that share these passions.

You Need to Invest in Your Employees and Your Growing Business

One last point to add to the business owner’s guide is to consider that you have to be ready to spend money in order to grow. New employees, extra inventory, new systems, all this costs money. Be sure to have money set aside that you can use for these purposes without hurting your bottom line.

Looking for a company to help you expand your business? During your research look at their previous work and whether they deliver what they say they are. Also be sure to interview existing and past clients. Their track record is the most important thing.

We at MBB Management can help you with all of this. MBB is an army of professionals that is built to fit your business’ needs.

As a franchise consulting company in Philadelphia, we specialize in bringing you the best tools and expert advisors to provide a solid path to success. We work primarily with restaurants looking to expand their business through becoming a franchisor. Your one location should already have been proven successful before considering franchising it. We also works with restaurants who are already franchisors, but who are looking to improve their system. Our consultants can aid you in hiring personnel as well as increasing efficiency and quality and boosting up franchise sales.

Some of the services MBB Management offers you include franchise development for new franchise programs, strategic planning for franchise growth as well as help with all the legal documentation involved. They also offer assistance with developing operations and training documentation and franchisee recruitment marketing strategies.

We also work with other businesses looking to franchise as well, including manufacturers, dealers and distributors. For existing franchisors, services include franchise system best practices and benchmarking and organizational audits, improved franchisee support systems and franchise sales coaching.

Other services include brand development, name and logo selection and design, and due diligence assistance for mergers and acquisitions.
MBB Management first made a name for itself in hospitality management, but now we also offer franchise consulting and restaurant consulting services as well.

Our restaurant consulting services include franchise development, but also so much more. Even if you are not looking for more locations right now, but are hoping to grow your restaurant in other ways or even if you are just starting out with your first restaurant, we can help.

Our experienced restaurant consultants can help re-teach your staff basic restaurant techniques and help you streamline processes both in the kitchen and in the dining room. Some of our restaurant consulting services include menu design, staff training and food distribution. We can also help you find the right balance between quality service and cost so that you don’t lose customers over poor quality dishes just to save money.

For more information about how MBB Management can help you with your business growth in 2019, give us a call today.