Prepared for a chain reaction?

Yesterday I wrote about chain reactions affecting our businesses and lives. Contingency plans help us prepare for negative situations, but a chain reaction may actually be a positive thing.

For example, you may make a single sale where you gave the client great service. That client belongs to a business group so she tells them about your service and you get 3 more sales. Those 3 people post about you on Facebook and you another 5 sales.Those 5 people blog about you which leads to another 8 sales, and those 8 tweet the  original blog post and you get 30 new sales.

Word of mouth marketing and viral marketing have always been good for businesses, and can lead to more sales. With the growth of social media, the chain reaction for a business can be big very fast.

My question is, are you prepared for the chain reaction in your business? If an extra 30 sales came in this week, could you deal with them all? If your marketing campaign goes viral, can your website cope with double, triple or quadruple the traffic? If you suddenly find your blog is popular and getting 50 comments a day, could you keep up with approving and answering them?

Being prepared for a chain reaction, could include the following…

• have procedures in place so steps are followed even if things are busy and if you get new staff (including temps and VAs) to help you
• know how to upgrade your website hosting quickly
• automate whatever you can so you have more time available for the tasks you are truly needed for
• space out marketing campaigns so there is a steady stream of results instead of ‘all or nothing’
• when planning a marketing campaign, bring in extra staff, outsource more tasks and keep the following week (or whatever is appropriate) free for dealing with the response
• monitor online mentions of your business so you can have at least some warning of a possible influx of work
• if filling your diary from the new sales, remember to block out necessary background tasks (invoicing, packaging, meetings, gathering information, etc)

How have you prepared for a chain reaction resulting in a lot more work for you?