It is important to differentiate between a sales transaction and customer acquisition. If all you are focused on is an individual sale of a product or service then it is difficult to build a scaleable business. However, if the focus is on the acquisition of new customers who will buy from you again and again, then the business can be scaled.
If you think about your own experiences you will realise it is easier (more comfortable) to buy from someone you have bought from before. This may be because you don't have to re-type delivery details or because a level of trust is present that the right things will be sent quickly at a reasonable price - perhaps not always the cheapest.
Better still if the newly acquired customer is buying a subscription service of some kind like a magazine. On or off line, this type of business has substantial scaleable potential.
When business founders get started, the scalability of the business is sometimes ignored in favour of the immediate opportunity. So if you have spotted that unique opportunity in the market you may just be concentrating on unique sales not on what happens next.
If you have a project based business like a web design company or are a construction contractor, to grow the business you have to have more and bigger projects. However, each project is unique and has to be sold uniquely. If sales dry up or anything gets in the way of production like the internet line going down, or bad weather, then the company can be in real trouble if it does not have enough cash reserves.
A scaleable business side steps these issues by building resilience into the business model. So, if you are selling widgets they should ideally come with a service element that requires a regular fee - eg iPhones and Apple Music.
If you are selling websites it is better if the sale is accompanied with a service contract for monthly updates of content or digital promotion. If you are a builder, perhaps the new build comes with a contract to cover boiler maintenance or any sort of maintenance insurance such as plumbing and drains.
The key is to ensure that each time you make a sale and recruit a new customer they are contracted into a service based ongoing relationship that builds the base income of the business. This gives the business the potential to grow exponentially and builds in financial security for the future.
This approach also adds some special magic to the business. Not only does it put it on a predictable and potential infinite growth path, it allows you to predict the future to a very large degree.
It means that forward projections are more than a future estimate on past performance - they will be to a very large degree based upon pre-agreed income streams. The probability that the projections are likely to come true will be very high.
With a solid and predictable income stream, the ability to continually to grow and a high probability of your projections being correct, you will be in a very strong position when coming to sell the business and able to ask for a much higher sales price.
