How to Grow Your Business What does business growth mean to you? (Increase turnover by X%? Expand your offices? Hire more employees to release some of your time?) Once you have a focus, leveraging these seven steps will help you achieve your goals. 1. There are only four ways to grow any business • Increase the number of customers (of the type you want to have) • Suggestion: Use referral systems to bring quality customers in to your business • Increase the number of repeat customers • Suggestion: Create special offers to encourage customers to come back • Increase your average sale value • Suggestion: Package goods/ services together; • Consider what other goods/ services could be supplied to your customers • Increase the effectiveness of each process or system within the business • Systemise to make your processes more efficient and watch your expenses 2. What gets measured gets managed Measure all your key performance indicators (KPI’s). Not all of these are financial, and, in many cases, the nonfinancial measurements are just as important. Some examples of KPI’s might be: • Conversion rates – incoming calls to sales; meetings to quotes; quotes to sales; • Net Promoter Score • Team happiness scores And the usual financial ones: • • • •
Turnover by month and YTD Gross margins by month and YTD Cash balances Debtor days (how long your customers take to pay)
Once you start to measure these, you can manage trends and set targets. Make sure you measure the right KPIs; you do not want to report on too many and lose focus. 3. Build a unique differentiator • What differentiates you from others? Build your brand around this and ensure your team is consistently spreading the message • People buy the differences they perceive between businesses
12
www.raffingers.co.uk
4. Understand customers’ key frustrations… Surveying customers or just asking customers what they think can give you invaluable insights into why they buy, which you can use to focus your business plan and grow your business. Some examples of key frustrations would be: • Goods or services not delivered on time • Not returning calls • Not issuing quotes in a timely manner • Mistakes on orders If you can turn around any of these key frustrations into positives, it can only help the business. For example: • “If we fail to deliver on time, we will send you a voucher for a meal on us” • “If we fail to return your call within X hours, we will discount the cost of our service by 10%” 5. Focus on the lifetime value of customers • Approach existing customers with new products and services • Do not focus on the upfront cost and appreciate the value of customers that keep coming back 6. Do not just cut the price! • • • • •
Value add to products rather than discount Create packages 2 for 1 sales to clear old stock Closed door sales Discount for “future” purchases – “buy again within 30 days and receive X% off”
7. Lower the barriers to doing business What barriers affect customers buying from you? • • • •
Rigid payment systems Distance from you Opening hours Ease of contact
And then remove the barriers to grow your business: • Payment systems – make it easy for customers to pay – offer alternatives: - cash / card / apple pay / website etc • Extended opening hours – late nights on certain days of the week, pop up shops • Free delivery offers For support on how to grow your business, contact Andrew Coney at andrew.coney@raffingers.co.uk
