The 6 Biggest Challenges You’ll Face Growing a
Company
Author: Patrick Henry former Entropic CEO, CEO of GroGuru
Originally published on Inc

1. Expanding your sales team, implementing a sales process, and measuring results

Rapid growth involves adding
complementary products and
expanding into new vertical
markets.
You need additional sales people
and may even need new sales
channels to reach your varying
target customers.
As you add new products and
customers, you will likely need to
refine your sales funnel process
to account for different sales
cycles.
In today's world there is no
excuse for not having a solid
Customer Relations Management
(CRM) system, and a process
behind it.
Measuring cost of sales and other
key metrics including the sales
cycle, customer acquisition cost,
lifetime value of a customer,
churn, conversion rate, and
customer satisfaction is essential.
Look at competitive metrics to
help determine what an
adequate level of performance
would be and what it takes to be
"world class" in any category.

2. Building a proper operations of manufacturing function

As you increase your product
volume or number of users, you
must have a product that can scale
with accelerated customer demand.
When you are developing a product,
it is important to understand what
volume you will need to support
assuming you are successful.
Lack of scalability in your product or
service offering can also create
perverse side effects like upset
customers or massive technical and
customer support issues.
If you have a physical product, you
will need to determine how much
inventory you need to service
demand. Measuring inventory turns
and production cycle times is critical
Understanding the working capital
requirements as you have higher
accounts payable and receivables is
also essential.

3. Hiring the right people at the right time

In hiring during rapid growth, the
temptation is to hire as quickly as
possible. But hiring too many people too
fast can be a deadly as hiring too slow.
Continue to focus on quality and cultural
fit while filling the most critical positions.
You need to look at your team company
wide and identify key bottleneck areas.
Think about your company as a total
system. Hold managers accountable for
spending the necessary time on the
strategic area of hiring.

4. Implementing a product development process and customer support team

DEVELOPING A 'BUFFER' BETWEEN YOUR SALES TEAM
AND THE DIRECT CUSTOMER IS CRITICAL IN THIS
STAGE OF A COMPANY.
A SKILLED PRODUCT MARKETING TEAM CAN DISCERN
AND FILTER WHICH PRODUCT FEATURES TO INCLUDE
IN NEW PRODUCTS.
IF YOU DON'T HAVE THIS FILTER, YOU WILL END UP
DOING WHATEVER THE LOUDEST AND MOST
FORCEFUL VOICE SAYS, OR EVEN WORSE, TRY TO DO
EVERYTHING THAT EVERY CUSTOMER TELLS YOU THEY
WANT AND NEED.

5. Moving the focus of management and leadership from the core to the periphery

While product development is at the core of an early stage company, sales and operations
becomes more critical during rapid growth.
There still needs to be a balance between innovation and execution during rapid growth,
and great leaders will guide the decisions between sales, marketing, operations, finance
and product development to ensure that you meet customer demand while expanding the
team and having a product roadmap that isn't impossible to execute against.
The temptation is to concentrate solely on tactical issues. As a leader, you need to continue
to highlight and drive key strategic issues like hiring and the product roadmap in the midst
of the chaos of an explosive ramp.

6. Implementing critical processes

While innovation is the cornerstone of early stage success, repeatability
and incremental improvement are essential during rapid growth.
This is not to say that you shouldn't have a solid product roadmap. Quite
to the contrary, you just need to have extensive re-use of earlier products
in your new platforms.
This requires more extensive documentation and process implementation
than is wanted or needed in an early stage company.