You have successfully taken your business from stage zero to the first stage. Now you have a product live in the market, some customers, maybe a couple of partners, and even a financier. What next? It is now time to move the business to the next stage – thousands of customers, millions of dollars in revenue, a larger team, maybe more financiers, and so on.
Note first that there is no saying how long the startup stage would or should last. It can be a year, two years, five years, or even more. It is evident to everyone on the team when it is time to move on to the growth stage.
Here are three skills you need to grow your business from the launch stage to become a successful company.
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Sales
You must work on sales to grow revenue from hundreds of thousands into millions. Get more customers, increase your market share, expand into new areas, and boost sales. You will need the skills to execute these at the growth stage.
Customer service
This is closely linked to the former. As you onboard new customers, you must develop a customer service culture that will keep your customers glued to you. There will be constant competition with other brands upping their game to give as much or even more than you do. It may require you to upgrade your solution to keep up. They become your evangelists if you can keep your customers happy and satisfied.
Team building and people management
You will work with a larger team than you did at the beginning. Depending on your model, this may be completely remote, physical, or hybrid. It will take more from you to manage a team of 100 people than to manage a group of 10. That is why I mentioned in a previous post that one person might not have all the skills, but in some cases, they do. You may be good at building and working very well with a team of 10 people, but not a group of 100.
One thing you should keep in mind is creating a sense of mission that brings them together. A lot at this stage will depend on the culture you built with a more minor team. How you develop and treat your team members is very important.
There are other skills you will need as you gradually grow your business from the launch stage to become a successful company. Things like risk management, resource management, and so on. Most of them may have team members with that expertise, but you have to be directly involved in sales and people management. You should know what is going on with your sales team at every point because the business is going nowhere if there are no sales.