Why Scaling a Service Business Is All About Communication

This article was originally featured in Fast Company.

Your clients will tell you how to run your business. But to scale it, you also need to look inside the company and focus on setting the stage for effective communication.

My business partners and I have a definition of success that might surprise you: It’s our goal to end our business with the same set of clients we started with. An enduring relationship with our clients is how we define winning.

After all, as wealth managers, we are at our best when we become an extension of our clients’ families—a trusted advisor with whom they can be transparent and vulnerable as they work through all the relationships, dynamics, and complexities that come with growing their business and their wealth, which powers their ability to create an enduring legacy.

Committing to long-tenure client relationships doesn’t mean we don’t seek to grow our business; it simply means that to scale, we know we must be intentional about how we leverage what we have to offer. As our business grows, my team and I recognize we aren’t going to encounter fewer problems and less conflict. In fact, there will be the potential for more of each, so our success depends on our ability to solve problems and resolve conflict quickly, both from a client and employee perspective.

Recognizing that people drive our culture, and that people and culture are key ingredients in scaling our business, we have sought to understand how to optimize both. We believe it all comes down to one word: communication.

If you ask your clients, they will tell you how to run your business. But to scale it, you also need to look inside the company and focus on setting the stage for effective communication.

CULTURE IS TABLE STAKES

Being intentional about how you treat one another is the bedrock of culture, and how you treat one another becomes how you treat your clients. Founder-led cultures often assume the personality of the owners, which can be a wonderful, organic thing. As you grow beyond your founding team, however, it’s imperative that you codify your culture, share it with those who join your company, and practice and ritualize it.

It’s critical, then, that you and your team take the time to create meaningful stories about who you are. This can take the form of a vision and mission statement, or values and fundamentals that describe the things you collectively agree are the most important to your business and success. Communicating those values, and ensuring that as leaders you take care to model them, will help your culture power your ability to scale.

PEOPLE ARE PARAMOUNT

Ensuring that everybody in your company plays to their highest strengths is critical when it comes to scaling talent in your service business.

Commit to a robust dialogue: Communicate your vision for the company as it grows, and listen to your employees for ideas about how they can grow with you. Not only do you want to build a career track that makes a long-term commitment to your company attractive, you want to strive to be the employer of choice in your industry.

At times, it will also be important to consider making an investment in dynamite new talent to take your business to the next level. For example, bringing in a strong Chief Operating Officer to ensure your business is well designed to scale, having a super-charged sales leader who can teach others how to sell and motivate them to get out and do it, or creating a head of client experience role to ensure you are delivering client satisfaction that will help with retention and referrals. Strategic hires can be the building blocks that power your business to take a quantum leap forward.

Also consider empowering your human resources team to lead occasional talent reviews to ensure that the team you’re growing fits from a culture perspective, has the skills and tools they need to get the job done, and has that “X” factor that will make them successful with your clients. In my business, intellect and technical skills are prerequisites, and the “X” factor my team and I look for is a growth mindset.

Soft skills like this can be hard to articulate and measure, but you know them when you see them. They are the traits and behaviors that make your clients light up when the associate walks into the room and lean forward in their seats to hear what the associate has to say. It’s not just about Intelligence Quotient; it is about Emotional Quotient too.

LET CLIENTS IN

Have you ever noticed that your best ideas for running your business often come from your clients? Especially in a service or consulting business, listening to your customers is one of the best ways to grow, so make it a point to look from the outside in—not just from the inside out.

At Balentine, clients hire us to delegate stress and simplify their complicated lives. They want to worry less about their money and trust that we’re making decisions in their best interests. Sometimes they also want us to help them navigate the complexities that come with generating wealth—everything from how to identify their successor in business to tricky family relationships. Success, therefore, means we’ve become members of the family—people who can set the agenda for the family meeting, politely fend off the awkward requests for money, and pick up the phone in our off hours.

CONCLUSION

Scaling a service business is a lot easier if you think through the layers and levels of communication you need to open and maintain long before your company hits its growth stride. Take the opportunity to consider your culture, your people, and the perspectives of your clients at every step along the way, not just when you want to make the next big leap.

Effective communication is the fuel to scaling a service business around the employee and client experience.

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