When a startup is composed of only a few people, the small team that started the company, it’s easy to manage everyone and everything. You’ve got your first few clients, and they’re happy with your work, paying all their bills on time and referring your services to other potential clients. But as your startup grows—with more staff, more clients, and more money to keep track of—it can be a challenge to manage all these aspects efficiently.
But there are ways to make this process easier, so that you don’t lose too much time or money. It’s all about ensuring you use collaboration, effective lead generation, and strict budgeting. Here’s how:
Collaboration
It doesn’t matter if you’re working with 5, 25, or 75 employees; any team, regardless of size, needs to have the right tools and resources to successfully collaborate. Teams, whether they are working alongside one another in the same space or remote, need to have awareness of the initiatives their colleagues are pursuing. Yes, there are many collaborative tools available that allow teams to message one another throughout the day and share files, but what these tools often lack is context.
Cage is a new platform that enables contextual collaboration. Through Cage, teams have the ability to gather feedback in real time, assign tasks, edit images, and distribute media files, all on one platform. By facilitating the entirety of a project, from the initial brainstorm to a final review before a video or platform is published, Cage ensures that everyone involved in the projects has full insight into updates and strategic pivots.
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Regardless of the medium, every project takes on a life of its own. More often than not, facets shift over time, and these changes and discussions are often implemented across several platforms, which often leads to confusion and oversight. Cage helps teams avoid this pitfall and, as a result, empowers them to collaborate more effectively and efficiently.
Effective lead generation
All startup founders need to focus on revenue efficiency. Otherwise, according to Forbes, you’ll be totally lost: strategic planning and tracking is the only way that you’ll be able to ensure you’re being as efficient as possible when it comes to revenue and effective lead generation.
LeadCrunch advises that for every dollar spent on customer acquisition, a company should generate $2.50 in return. But this is not possible if you don’t prioritize top-of-the-funnel sales leads. Too many organizations waste time and money by casting large, and irrelevant nets at the top of the funnel, which results in sales people wasting their time trying to engage customers who, simply, aren’t interested. LeadCrunch’s CEO, Olin Hyde, believes that the key to successful lead-generation is micro segmenting, engagement, and nurturing.
Fueled by their AI-driven platform, LeadCrunch allows companies to pinpoint relevant, high-quality prospects, and cultivate deep relationships with them using information that is specific to their unique needs. As a result of their platform’s laser-sharp focus, LeadCrunch’s top performing customers often see conversion rates spanning 300-1000 percent after leveraging the platform’s technology.
Strict budgeting
It’s not enough anymore for a startup to use an Excel sheet to calculate and keep track of all their budgeting needs. Even if they’ve moved onto Google Sheets, which are, after all, free—that’s still not enough. If your startup is growing, it makes sense to invest in a B2B budgeting tool that uses actual objective data, which will help you understand how different actions and decisions affect the money coming in.
Hive9, a planning, budgeting, and analytics solution created specifically for B2B marketers, is a smart way for you to keep track of every aspect of budgeting. What’s most effective about it? According to Olive & Company, “This comprehensive tool integrates your marketing goals, plan, and budget with your campaigns, so you can measure success and strategically allocate your budget…Hive9 helps you determine where your revenue is coming from, down to a specific touchpoint, and where you can improve your marketing. It also helps determine your cost per marketing lead and sales qualified lead.”
According to Hive 9’s mission, they want to help you create a budgeting plan that you can stick to, one that directly correlates to the complex projects you have going on. They understand how stressful it can be to juggle marketing, which is ever-changing, with budget planning.
Growing your startup is certainly going to be a challenge—but it’s a challenge worth taking. After all, change and growth are one of the best ways to ensure your startup thrives and succeeds. By using the strategies of collaboration, effective lead generation, and strict budgeting, you’ll be able to improve your startup while also keeping control of all aspects as it grows.
Have you ever grown your startup from its original size? What challenges did you come across, and what strategies did you use to make the transition easier?
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