One of the jobs of a business coach, consultant, and advisor is to help clients quickly see a path to get results. In the case of increasing revenues, there are four primary strategies that business leaders need to master.
Strategy One: Increase the number of people who are aware of and interested in your products. In other words, generate more prospects. There are literally hundreds of ways to get more visible to your target market, and every business owner should have at least five to ten marketing tactics at work all the time in order to attract more prospects. The more visible you are – with a compelling marketing message for your target market – the more business you will generate.
Strategy Two: Increase your conversion rate so that more prospects buy from you. Visibility is not enough. You also need to hone your sales process to convert prospects to customers. For instance, many online businesses incorrectly focus first on driving traffic to their website when a more profitable strategy would be to focus first on having a website that converts more visitors to customers. What good is traffic if few people buy when they come to your website? Similarly, sales-oriented businesses should develop a consistent, constantly improving sales process, so that every sales person follows proven best practices.
Strategy Three: Increase the average price per sale. Many businesses have an opportunity to earn more money per sale by bundling products, adjusting pricing, cross-selling, and changing the products or service portfolio. For instance, one retailer of proprietary products for parents had a $20 average sale until she bundled products into beautifully packaged gift sets and increased the average sale to over $65.
Strategy Four: Increase the number of sales per customer over time. In today’s economy, it is expensive to attract new customers. Therefore, customer loyalty – or a high lifetime value of a customer – is essential to the survival and success of almost every business. It is crucial to have a business with products, services, a service model, and relationship marketing that keeps customers coming back and has them raving about your business to others. Business owners need to put in place a process and systems to build ongoing relationships, continue to provide value to customers, and be the first business a customer thinks to call when they have a need.
The above strategies are an excellent framework for business owners to consider how to increase sales. From there, the business coach and business owner can develop the right tactics, a set of ambitious goals, and an action plan to optimize each strategy and take the business to the next level of growth and profitability.
Of course, as with any framework, the business owner also has to be sure to have systems in place, cash flow, and operational capacity to handle growth, along with a gross profit margin that feeds the bottom line as revenues grow.
