In early-stage companies resources are limited, so employing the right people with the right skill sets is absolutely crucial to be ready for scaling. As they say, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. This article will walk you through how to get your team ready for scaling. From assessment to strategy, to action, you’ll be ready to build an ace team that can really keep up. 

Assess Your Team

Start by looking at your current workload and responsibilities. Is your current team equipped to handle a ramp-up in projects without neglecting current customers, products, and services? If your marketing coordinators are also supporting other departments (such as PR or customer service) while analyzing performance data and implementing new marketing tools, they’re doing too much. Go back and streamline efforts and processes so your team has the bandwidth to be ready for scaling — or consider adding staff to balance your team’s workload and responsibilities. 

Next, ask yourself: Does your team have the expertise needed to launch successful campaigns in the new regions or industries you’re targeting? If not, you should hire new staff now, or contract out until you have a better idea of the kind of expertise your team needs. Evaluate your current team to identify each member’s strengths and expertise, identify where your talent gaps lie and hire for those roles. 

If you need to hire, employ generalists. Marketing is a broad, multifaceted area, and you might need someone who can do PPC, SEO, and content at the same time. Instead of hiring three different people with expertise in each field, you can hire jack-of-all-trades. While this may seem like a loss in quality, it’s going to help you long-term. A generalist can set up the framework for company operations and lead the rest of the team when you end up hiring for individual roles. Outsource remaining specialized tasks to a third-party organization or freelancers.

Invest in Your Team 

Some companies, notably big tech companies like Google or Zappos, invest a great deal of money in their employees for good reason: It helps them grow by retaining and attracting top talent. When employees feel valued, they’ll passionately share your vision and dig deep within themselves to help your business thrive. Surround yourself with the best people you can and give them an opportunity to do what they love to do best. 

Talk to employees and find out what resources they need to work better and more efficiently. Invest in the resources that will help them today, and be ready for scaling with operations as your business grows.

Next, you need to train new hires rigorously. Your first new marketing rep should go through the same training process as your fifth or tenth hire. You can of course tweak your approach to onboarding over time, but your new hires should all have the same opportunities to settle into your marketing process. Rushing or cutting corners in your training will only hurt their performance. 

Finding the right scaleurs — a sample interview for your scaleur A-team

When recruiting your A-team, it’s important that each candidate have the right fit for your company. You want to find people who are hungry, eager to learn and adapt, and have the positive energy to go the extra mile. Having a solid résumé is fine, but you really need them to have a growth mindset. 

Here are five of the questions I like to ask:

1. What do you want to achieve in life? Where do you want to stand in five or 10 years? When you retire? This lets you see how ambitious they are. 
2. How would you measure your success?

   This shows you how they value their achievements and failures. 

3. On a scale from 0 to 10, how happy are you, and what would it have been last year?

   I like to be surrounded with optimistic, positive people. It’s OK to feel dissatisfied, but you don’t want to waste your energy on hiring someone who complains too much. Everyone gets stuck in traffic jams, but not everyone honks the horn. 

4. What is the most spontaneous thing you did in the last three years?

   I want to understand how people feel about going outside their comfort zones. 

5. What makes you happy?

   Here, I want to understand their energy drivers. 

Overall, these questions relate to me as a person, and I want to have these kinds of energized people around me. Everyone has to make their own questions for the hiring process, but the Gingerbread Tool will help you understand who you are and which kind of people you need to lift you up — and help your business scale for growth and innovation.

Outsource Strategically 

One way of assembling your A-team might involve hiring a marketing consultant, which could save you lots of time and money. Since these professionals have mastered the skill of engaging audiences, they can help you scale your marketing efforts quickly.

Outside consultants may have the staff and investment in systems that enable them to be much more efficient in handling a particular function than your company. Trying to replicate that function internally may take too much time or money. Instead, find a reliable partner to outsource this aspect too, which should position your business to scale better, faster, and cheaper.

However, don’t go overboard — “too much of a good thing” can be counterproductive. Find the right balance between in-house vs. outsourcing. When you outsource, it is never a bad idea to tell the team why you need outside help and for how long. 

Conclusion

When building your team to be ready for scaling your business, you can’t do it as many businesses do, organically and without real consideration. Instead, you need to assess your current team’s strengths, weaknesses, and capacity, and assess what your needs are and will be at different increments of time. Once you have that clear, you can then invest in your team to ensure they’re trained, supported, and happy. Finally, don’t be afraid to bring in outside experts as needed to keep things moving along! 

Become a Successful Scaleur

Scaling is a strategy that can only be mastered by a scaleur who is a dedicated learner and considers real-time business priorities. I hope the article above has helped! Marketing Scaleurs is a scaling company that helps entrepreneurs scale their marketing efforts. We’re experts in growth marketing, product development, and more, creating custom growth plans for startups, entrepreneurs and scaleurs in order to help them gain traffic, generate leads and increase their revenue. 

If you want traffic, leads and sales, get in touch and you’ll start getting results in no time!