If you wish to grow your business you need to understand what your main growth drivers are and how they will impact on your business.
The following brief note concentrates simply on 6 key growth drivers to land more business rather than the profit or cash flow consequences of this. Bear in mind that “turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, while cash is reality”.
- Get your customers to buy more from you. The easiest way to increase your sales is simply to sell more to your existing customers. They are already in a buying relationship and presumably know, like and trust you. When McDonalds ask “would you like fries with that” most people normally agree. An immediate sales increase!
- Get your customers to buy more frequently from you. Consider how you can increase the number of times you get/ask your customers to buy from you. You can do this by having a loyalty scheme or a regular customer contact program.
- Get your customers to stay customers for longer. Studies have indicated that the average customer defection rate is about 20% and that 2/3’s of these leave because of perceived indifference. They feel that they are being taken for granted and they are no longer important to you. It is your responsibility to show at all times that you do care by providing them with top class service at all times.
- Getting more customers is what most businesses concentrate on. The key to this driver is to make your existing strategies more efficient and effective and by coming up with new strategies.
- Another growth driver is to convert more leads into sales. In excess of 70% of customers say “NO” at least 5 times before actually buying so in this regard you need to be patient and persistent to get past the 5th “NO”. You should have a sales approach that makes buying less risky for customers and removes all the issues that cause them to say “NO”.
- The most powerful driver is pricing as raising prices has the biggest impact of all as in many cases price increases go straight onto the bottom line. But raising prices comes with the risk that you lose customers in the process so you need to make sure that what you are selling and how you are selling it has value for your customers.
If you are interested in exploring how the above drivers can be applied to your business please let me know as I am organising a small select course on this very soon. You can email your interest to me at seamusp@parfreymurphy.ie.