YOUR FOCUS: GROWING REVENUE NOW!

Our forward looking part of the businesses we operate and communities we live in seems to be finally resurfacing amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of you and your businesses had your costs dramatically increased and your revenue stream cannibalized. Knowing how to rapidly restart your growth and ensuring your ability to deliver exceptional service to your customers are paramount for long-term success. Growing your small business is no easy feat and requires a tremendous amount of perseverance, dedication, focus, and even some luck.  Most importantly, it requires a deliberate plan and your personal execution. 

While a myriad of strategies can enable a small business to achieve growth, here are several that warrant consideration and implementation.

Align Sales and Marketing

The terms sales and marketing are often used interchangeably. Do not make the mistake yourself. One is about messaging you and your products and services… marketing is all about you. Selling on the other hand at least in the non-retail world, is all about your customer. They provide vastly different—and equally important—contributions to the company or organization. They are, in fact, the Yin-Yang that cultivate customers, generate sales, and serve as the fuel for your company. Marketing is, and should be, viewed as a critical investment for the financial success of the organization. Sales without an appropriate marketing function is costlier, less effective and reduces the bottom-line. Marketing is a reflection of your hopes, dreams and aspirations and most importantly your ability to deliver on your brand promise. 

Establish a formal referral program. Data conclusively demonstrates that customer referrals are a significantly effective but extremely underutilized business strategy. According to Dale Carnegie, 91 percent of customers would give a referral, but only 11 percent are asked. Creating a formal referral program can allow your customers to help you grow by becoming a brand ambassador for your company. Your ongoing success benefits your strategic partners and customers as your viability ties into their viability if you have been successful at building the relationship and delivering on the “goods”.

Elevate your brand. When growing a small business, it is extremely important that your brand continues to evolve, as it can unlock competitive advantages for the company. Your brand is a dynamic asset that must always differentiate your company and its products and services. Oftentimes, as a company grows, its brand remains static and becomes ineffective as a new customer segment, geography or service offering is pursued. It is critical to remember that, as the company grows, you must elevate your brand and communications to address the new market requirements. If you are looking externally and solving problems for customers and potential customers your brand will follow along with your reputation. Always be aware and deliberate.

Expand Your Offerings

Your customers and their needs are always evolving.  Changes in what their customers want; changes in regulations and changes in their supply chain to name a few reasons.  Your offerings should reflect their dynamic environment. Learn to be a great problem solver. Being aware of your customers’ long-term needs, research and development or industry trends enables you to anticipate their future needs and position your company to service them.  Be opportunistic in solving short term problems. Unlike traditional selling, this requires a relationship where your customer trusts you and confides in you. That requires you to stop talking about you and to start listening to them. This approach also affords your company the opportunity to be first-to-market and a disruptor because it takes the lag and guess work out of product/service development. Often times you can make the adaptation literally on the fly to accommodate your customer. Sometimes “expanding” is temporary or incremental. So do not throw the baby out with the bath water!

Focus On Customer Relationships

Per Marketing Metrics, increasing customer retention by five percent can increase profits between 25 and 95 percent. Why? Because maintaining your current customers is dramatically less expensive than acquiring new customers. It is that simple. Providing exceptional customer service that creates long-term and loyal customers is a sound strategy to grow your business. Also, upselling or cross selling current customers is significantly more effective and cost-efficient than securing new clients. That is the business or revenue reason. You may be different than me. But for me I think the revenue follows the relationship. I choose who I do business with as much as they choose me. I look to work with people that have shared values and a similar vision or intent. When I do not focus on alignment things… outcomes, margins and relationships… can get derailed quickly. When I keep my value system aligned with my company’s value system and both are aligned with my customers values and intent, the world is a harmonious and happy place. 

Develop Strategic Partnerships

Many small business owners can benefit from strategic partnerships that enable them to service a larger client or business opportunity together. Engaging professional help, including legal, financial and business experts, to form the partnership is the best approach for profitability and long-term success. I often find when a customer uses someone like me as a content expert with their client’s the client always appreciates their investment. 100% of the time and 100% of the time it improves my client’s status with their customer.

Become a recognized thought leader/expert. Here is a surefire way to elevate your reputation, build brand equity and attract ideal customers. Based on your industry and business, creating a blog, podcast, by-lined articles or other content to share your knowledge can be an effective strategy. Even sharing your expertise through speaking engagements, industry panels or other high-profile events provides an excellent opportunity to showcase your company and expertise. It is crazy what works. Be creative; do not follow the crowd as it is a crowded market!

Increase your geographic reach. Focusing on a manageable territory is smart. Developing opportunities to expand your customer reach is a significant growth strategy that should be pursued in a phased approach to ensure that additional customer requirements, logistics and costs are addressed.

Develop A New Client/Customer Base

Data suggests that selling to new customers is between 5 and 20 percent successful. Notwithstanding this data, a focused effort to attain customers in new sectors, geographies or segments need to be a prudent action on your part. Knowing when to engage in new client acquisition opportunities requires a well-thought-out strategic approach and flawless implementation. Do not allow this to be accidental or incidental. This needs to be a thoughtful, deliberate and planned process. It needs to be specific in terms of timing, actions, accountabilities and outcomes. Any it needs to be over a short, medium and long term horizon to be effective and sustainable.

Just Say No

First of all, I always tell myself, “NO”, is not an acceptable answer. The answer is always yes! There may be a condition or price attached to the yes, but all things considered none of us want a partner that says “no”.

So here is a big challenge for many small business owners. The ability to confidently and appropriately address difficult customers, to walk away from an ill-fitting business opportunity or to end a customer relationship requires the self-confidence and fortitude to opt-out. Learning to say “no” when it is not a good fit or within your wheelhouse is a significant growth strategy. So stop saying NO. Learn to redirect and problem solve. If you listen well and work through the problem together you will help solve their problem and you may have a strategic partner that can fill the need nicely. Everyone wins. No one loses. As it should be. So your new “NO” is now (and after listening and problem solving) Here is what I heard you say…(feedback), that will not work for me, but here are two or three solutions that will meet your (the customer’s) need. Always focus on solving a problem versus pitching a product.

Optimize Your Memberships

Each year, small business owners expend significant funds to join business, trade or other membership organizations. Make sure you assess the value of that membership annually. Translate the cost into new or sustained revenue. Was it an investment with a tangible return or something else? Be deliberate in your assessment. Most of us rarely take advantage of these memberships to share expertise, elevate our executive profile or build mutually beneficial relationships. With the financial investment, consider the additional investment of your time and talent by chairing a committee, serving on the board or supporting an initiative. By engaging, you will showcase your leadership capability, will enable others to take notice of you and your company, and can leverage your engagement to increase awareness for you and your company. Bottom line… and there is a bottom line here… there needs to be a mutually beneficial outcome.

Manage Your Customer Acquisition Costs

Opportunity cost is the value of a forgone activity or alternative when another option is chosen. Opportunity cost comes into play in any decision that involves a tradeoff between two or more options. The cost associated with the customer acquisition process is an important measure for a business to evaluate in combination with how much value having each customer typically brings to the business. Your customer acquisition cost evaluation should be reflected in your pricing strategy. And in many cases, your transactional revenue is capitated. This is where most companies struggle. They come into existence because they identified some niche. The market and sell to that niche and stagnate thereafter. They keep marketing and selling they way they always have and cannot figure out why they do not grow. One of the most curious things I find is when I speak to a historically successful owner, manager, “thought leader” that is struggling at maintaining or growing market share. I always ask what got them into their business, how they sell and always follow with “what have you done different?” More often than not there are one of two answers. The first is the group that subscribes to “program of the week” for a multitude of things from marketing to operations to employee recognition. They never met a new program they were not willing to try. Their excitement and enthusiasm is contagious. Their commitment, intentional execution and perseverance is missing. This is a much smaller group and you know who you are out there! The much larger group is the group that keeps doing things the way they have always done things. Inertia cares them forward in protecting their status quo. Their culture is often built around something foundational that worked at a point in time but may no longer be relevant. They personify Einstein’s definition of insanity but doing the same thing day after day expecting something magically different to be the result. They are committed to their program at any and all cost. It is mystifying that even when you repeat what you hear, they often laugh and say, hey, you are right! And when you talk about potential variants or new ways to solve their problems, they often fall back to their comfortable albeit death defying process of maintaining their old historic ways. Do not be a “paying member” of this club. They are committed and can execute on their old paradigm but cannot move forward to recapture success.

Finding Your Groove

Whether your small business is newly launched, is ready to grow or is in a holding pattern, the thoughtful implementation of these growth strategies can help you succeed well into the future. It requires a tremendous amount of perseverance, dedication, focus, and even some luck. As previously mentioned, it requires a deliberate plan and your personal execution. And at the end of the day it required some level of humility to be open, honest and introspective enough to get a second opinion rather than always being the trail blazer. If you worry about what is next or how to quickly reboot revenue, stop fretting about it and call me. We can figure this out together and they payoff to you and your business is tremendous!

In the coming weeks I will write an article addressing each section. For more information on how to implement the system, call me at 619-916-1171 or visit my LinkedIn profile at:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/kenlund

or my website at

www.NosillaRelyt.com