Every business owner is interested in growing their business. Making your business more valuable to your market and increasing your presence in your industry is sometimes seen as a really complicated process. However, if you want to keep things simple, there are really only four things you need to focus on. These four easy steps will allow you to develop a strong strategy for growing your business, no matter how small or big it is.
Step One: Increase your number of ideal customers
Note that the advice is not to simply increase the number of customers, but your number of *ideal* customers. Your ideal customers will provide you with more satisfaction and more long term sales than simply increasing the number of customers that you have. In order to complete this step, you need to define your ideal customer if you haven’t yet done so. Many times small business owners are so thrilled to be in business that they’ll take any business that comes their way. They attempt to market to everyone, and they don’t define common characteristics of their ideal customers. Define who you’d love to be buying your product or service and then find ways to market to that specific group of people.
Step Two: Increase the number of times customers come back.
It’s often said that it takes much more effort to obtain a new customer than it does to keep the customers that you have. If you find that your customer retention rates are low, it’s time to rethink your business strategy. Customer retention rates may be low because of something wrong in your customer follow up process. If you don’t have a system for following up with previous customers (like an email newsletter or customer survey) you need to implement some strategy to keep them involved. In addition to retaining the customers, you can also develop new products or services to sell to existing customers. For example, if you are a wedding planner you can start planning baby showers as well.
Step Three: Increase the value of each sale.
Raising the price of your product or service needs some serious consideration. Before you pursue price changes, you should carefully evaluate the market and determine if your prices will remain competitive. What additional value can you add that will make your price justified? Will you need to pursue a different type of client that can meet your new price? If everything looks good, go ahead and raise your prices to test out your research.
Step Four: Increase the effectiveness of each process in the business.
There are many steps along the way to each sale. From the client’s initial contact with your website or business name to the final process of accepting payment and delivering the service or product, there are many opportunities for things to be ineffective. You might be able to move someone through the sales process, but then they are dissatisfied overall. The key to growing your business is to recognize where your company may be missing the mark and look for opportunities to make each process in the business efficient and effective. (Note: check out more info on how our virtual office services can help your business.)
