Five ways to grow your business!

5 ways to grow your business

There are five ways or "levers” you can work on to grow your business. By regularly working on your business and not just in your business you will be able to “pull” these levers to achieve year on year growth.

These five levers are leads, conversion rate, transaction value, number of transactions and your margin.  To understand the things you can do to improve your performance in each area to achieve the business you want

Leads

1. Define who your best customers are and clearly define their characteristics
2. Work out how many leads you need to meet your turnover target
3. Talk to your best customers

• What do they like about you
• What else could you offer them
• Do they know other business owners who would require your services

1. Do some marketing every day

• This does not have to take a lot of time
• There are many cost effective ways e.g. social media
• Do not rely on one or two tactics, use 8-10

1. Review what is effective and do more of it
2. STOP doing anything that does not work

Sales

1. Have a sales pipeline that you regularly review
2. Consider what it would take to move prospects to the next stage
3. Understand where your clients are in the buying process
4. As well as looking to get new business, you need to ensure that you also look after existing clients and see what further/future services they require.
5. Remember that existing clients will have a shorter buying cycle as they have already bought from you.

Transaction value

1. Work out the average £ spend per client
2. Consider how you might differentiate your services to reflect the needs of different clients/target markets
3. Some clients will be very happy with a premium service and the additional cost that incurs
4. Other clients will only require a basic service but should understand that for instance call out times might be greater.

Number of transactions per year

1. Are there other services that you could offer to your clients – not only will this increase their spend but it will fulfil their needs e.g. an accountant offering a half yearly review.
2. Do you regularly keep in contact with your clients? You need to regularly remind them that you are there and that you care about them.
3. Are your clients aware of everything that you offer?

Margins

1. Regularly review the costs in your business – are there areas where you could make savings?
2. Look at your pricing – make sure that you are charging correctly for:

• Your services
• The time you spend delivering your product or service

1. Could you outsource some tasks e.g. bookkeeping or admin which would allow you to spend more time generating business
2. Are you making best use of technology?

By continually working on each of these areas your business will grow significantly year on year.  Are there areas in your business you find easier to manage than other?