Here are seven ways to grow your business, with the first five aiming to increase sales and the last two reducing your costs. The seven ways are:
- Increase customer retention.
Keeping customers happy is the key to stop them from considering the competition. It’s easier to retain existing clients than attract new ones.
- Increase leads generated.
You could have the best service in the world, but without marketing, no one will know about your business. Improved marketing strategies will help gain more enquiries from people who are not yet customers.
- Increase sales conversion rate.
It’s important to build rapport and follow up with potential customers—going the extra mile could be the difference between making a sale or not.
- Increase transaction frequency.
Engage customers to buy more often. Not only will profits increase, but also customer loyalty and satisfaction. For example, offer specials on repeat purchasing, offer subscriptions, loyalty programmes, annual service appointments, or pre orders.
- Increase transaction value.
Help customers buy additional products, services or bigger volumes. Upselling is a valuable technique that can increase profit margins or complimentary products.
- Reduce cost of sales.
Further increase margin by improving efficiency to reduce the costs that go into the product or service.
- Reduce overheads.
Eliminating or better managing fixed business costs is a crucial way to reduce expenses. Careful planning and evaluation can help identify where these changes can be made.
Often, there are improvements to be made in each area, however, it’s most effective to focus on one or two areas at a time.
For example, a manufacturer will likely want to focus on reducing variable costs first. It might become clear that wastage of raw materials or inefficient use of time is impacting the profit margin of each sale.
Or, maybe a retailer would focus on encouraging existing customers to come in more often. More time could then be spent on training the sales team to cross sell and upsell.
At Kendons we believe simply looking after your customers better to increase customer retention (number one on the list) is a fast track to growth. What strategies have you got in place for customer retention?
For more tips on how to grow your business, tune into the FREE webinar hosted by Kendons on Wednesday 10th February 12-1pm. Click here for further information and to register.
“Good service leads to multiple sales. If you take good care of your customers, they will open doors you could never open by yourself.” – Jim Rohn