How to Manage Success in Your Business

Every business owner dreams of being successful, but if you’re not prepared, success can be as hard to handle for you and for your business as the leanest of lean months. Making sure you know what to look out for and what you can do to keep your business growing can be the difference between sinking and swimming – and that’s no exaggeration.

In this article, the Panthera team explain some of the negative aspects of rapid success and what you can do to make sure they don’t happen.

The potential downsides of success

It is important to remember that a short spell of success in your business does not guarantee that it will be plain sailing for the rest of your career. As you read in those investment adverts – “past performance is not a guide to future performance”. Here are some of the things you need to look out for when your business is doing particularly well:

Additional responsibility

Taking on additional responsibility comes with a wealth of benefits. You get to build your business towards bigger and better things, you get to explore your industry in more depth, and most importantly, you’ll probably get paid more as there’s more cash in the business.

However, responsibility does also mean that you have more on your plate at any given time. Or it could mean that there is more at stake in your role. If you’re not ready to take on too much additional responsibility, be aware of jumping in at the deep end when these opportunities are available.

Additional stress

One of the side effects of responsibility is stress. Stress can cloud your judgement as a leader, make every day harder than it needs to be, and reduce your performance overall.  The best way to avoid becoming stress is to ease your way into taking on more responsibilities that take you out of your comfort zone.

By gradually integrating more of these kinds of activities into your working life, you can acclimatise to your new environment at your own pace. When your business becomes very successful, it can be easy to become stressed, especially when you’re a one-man army.

Straining your workforce

If you are an employer, you need to be aware of the potential strain that success is putting on your workforce. They are just as susceptible to stress as you are, and for all the same reasons. If they are having to take on additional responsibilities because of how well your business is doing, they might have just been thrown out of their comfort zones.

The best way to combat this across your entire workforce is to make sure that everyone who has a specialisation is adaptable so they can help out whenever anyone needs them. By creating a support structure, you provide your staff with a safety net for when they are unsure about what they are doing in this new, high-pressure role they are filling.

How you can manage success

In order to avoid these downsides of success, here are a few ways that you can manage your business as you move through the good times:

Adapting to change

If it feels like success has swept over your business overnight, don’t be afraid to reach out to more people to help you. Your accountant, your IT specialist, and your HR department should all be by your side as you mould your new business to meet your newfound demand.

Monitor your accounts

Success usually means that you are getting a lot more engagement from your target audience and more often than not, you’re dealing with more customers. This poses a potential risk to your cashflow. If you’re used to a smooth, reliable cashflow, a surge in sales can mean that your cashflow changes drastically, especially if there’s a gap between providing a product or service and getting paid for it. The first thing on your mind should be to stabilise your cashflow so you know how much you have to work with when it comes to hiring new staff members to deal with your new customers.

Make sure you’re still generating enough profit

Another issue that many business owners face is differentiating between turnover and profit in times of heavy sales. If you have a lot more customers, make sure that you are keeping a similar profit margin to what you were working at before they arrived. If you have more customers but you are making the same amount of money, you’re taking on more responsibility for no additional reward.

Find success with Panthera

If you would like professional guidance on cashflow management, employee payrolls, and managing the success of your business financially, get in touch with our team. We help successful business owners up and down the country. For more information, call us on 01235 768 561 or drop us an email to enquiries@pantheraaccounting.com – we’ll be back in touch with you shortly.