The answer is: by Selling Efficiently. (We’ll explain the formula in detail a little later, I promise.)
Inefficient selling means selling for lower than you bought or after the product has expired. If you can't sell your services efficiently then you will have a hard time scaling. Sure, You can get one big contract but that’s going to be a rare occasion for most entrepreneurs.
Think about the difference between growth and scaling. Growth in linear terms means a company adds new resources (capital, people, or technology), and its revenue increases as a result. Scaling is when revenue increases without a substantial increase in resources. Scaling is also known as increasing your ROI. All great entrepreneurs are able to sell their products efficiently AKA have a positive ROI.
Growth increases your profit amount but scaling increases both your profit percentage and amount.
Scaling is a byproduct of efficient selling. Longer sales cycles can be duplicated but are very difficult to scale.
Once you start to sell your services efficiently, you will own a literal money printing machine. At that point it will be your choice to hire executive management or continue being the CEO of your business.
Most people believe “If I keep getting more customers then I will make more money.” That reasoning is questionable because it is possible for a business to acquire customers at a loss. To avoid this, you’ll need to analyze if your marketing activities are generating a profit or if they are losing you money.
Unfortunately since measuring financial growth falls under the accounting arena, professionals that were never formally taught how to scale a business will often ignore these metrics in favor of the standard profit and loss statement or balance sheet.
Unfortunately these reports don’t tell you about the future of your business. The ideas I'm unpacking, and the formula I will reveal later, do.
Note: time is a factor just as much as price in business. You have to sell the service at a higher price than it costs and you have to sell faster than you spend.
That is efficiency. You might ask yourself, how you can tell if you are selling inefficiently? Well...ask yourself any of the following questions:
If you answered yes to any of those questions then you should start to investigate your selling efficiency. Especially since all of the symptoms listed above mean that you business has poor cash flow; a condition that can cause your stress and anxiety levels to increase.
If you are selling efficiently, chances are you have a scalable business on your hands...but how do you truly tell if your business is truly scalable?