Grow any business

1. You want more clients, but what type of client? Wouldn't you like to choose?

Most business owners will focus on winning new customers to grow their business. Just more leads, greater number of enquiries or just a few more phone calls would get more people to frequent the services the business has to offer. That may well be true but how? Advertising, that can be very costly without great success. There are other ways and most people ignore them. It can cost up to six times as much to secure a new client than to maximise an existing client effectively. After all the client is coming to you for service in the first instance and is willing to be sold to. Therefore, you can sell to whomever you want and avoid those types of client you do not really want.

2. Sell more more often!

By increasing your transaction frequency per customer you increase your profitability. Consider that a mere 5% increase in the retention of the right client can lead to as much as 125% increase in profitability. By merely engendering client loyalty through increased service and value perception you can retain more clientele and hence significantly improve profitability. Spending a vast budget on marketing and additional investment is often not the best way to increase profit.

3. Get more per sale.

Never a truer word spoken, "more" per sale. But how? Cross sell and Up sell. Every market can broaden horizontally, selling related product and services within the same sphere or broaden vertically through offering service and product which not directly within the same sector is none the less a requirement and can be on sold. These are very broad terms but we can assist you in to approach these aspects in a systemised manner. You can also increase your price. PRICE! Well, yes. If you generate a 3% net profit, raising the price 3% will double your profit. Simplistic, you say and that may well be the case but determining the relationship between fixed and variable costs, the volume of sales generated and of course the price itself influence the final level of pricing employed and if it is done correctly improved profitability should be the outcome.

4. How effective are your processes?

The fourth way to grow your business is more of an all-encompassing strategy than the other 3 ways. You see, increasing the effectiveness of the way you do business is central to everything but so few people work at it. When you think about it, a business is nothing more than a group of people carrying out a variety of processes - the quality of the processes defines and determines the quality of the outcomes. Makes sense doesn't it? So going back to the example earlier of a business owner needing 'more leads' we might discover that in fact, the business doesn't need any more leads rather to convert more of the ones they're already receiving! That's a sales 'process' that needs improving. Truth is that most people don't see their businesses as a series of processes. But that's exactly what they are. To illustrate the point, consider this true story of a Turf (or sod) Farm. The farm is located out of town so about 85% of business comes from people calling checking prices. By measuring certain results it transpired that when people visited the farm, 85% of them bought. While only 22% of people who called on the phone actually came out to the farm. So the key activity (or process) to change was, of course, the way in which the phone was being handled. That was part of the ongoing business development program. The results were instant. The phone conversion rate shot up to 60% (that's right, suddenly nearly 3 times more people visited the Turf Farm). Put even more simply, the business development programme helped the client multiply this part of their business by nearly 3 times. And that could be you!

Your processes are central to how you maximise your opportunities. Earlier on we spoke about gaining additional leads and scoring  new customers. If you do not have the processes in place to take advantage of the leads you are getting now then paying for advertising and marketing plans will be fruitless. Every business is a set of processes which if working in tune will  maximise and convert every opportunity making every customer feel satisfied with their decision to buy the goods or services you have to offer.