eBusiness Weekly
Robert Gonye
As alluded to in our preceding article, this week’s article takes an in-depth look at one of the critical questions in managing and operating a business, that is the question of how to grow the revenue of a business.
For purposes of clarity, this does not refer to the growth of the sales team but rather the sales revenue, the quality of sales, and ultimately getting the customers to buy more and remaining loyal to the brand. Your marketing strategy should thus address the sales element lest you be taken to task by the marketplace which will without fail discipline you for failure to respect that central to the creed of selling is upholding the needs and wants of the customer.
Getting from a position of where we are now to a position higher up on the totem pole will need us to address a few fundamental principles in business. Some of these are mentioned below.
Your business, whether formal or not, can only grow its revenue by having an increase in the number of customers, increasing the transaction value of each customer, and by increasing the frequency or consistency of purchase by the said customers.
Any business has to have a deliberately cut out revenue strategy. Yes, the world will tell you to make sure you have a digital strategy as your marketing strategy but what if your business has not evolved to that level or stage and all you have are foot soldiers (active sales teams)?
This by far still remains the most powerful tool within any organisation to get real sales value. Any other strategy that comes to play has to support this in sales revenue creation. Products and services do not sell themselves.
They need a sales force which is communication driven and to a larger extent human-driven through understanding, educating, and implementing what the product or service does. Your customer growth can be achieved by one or a combination of the processes spelled out below.
Any serious business needs to run a referral system. A good product or service sells itself and speaks volumes to other people through its after effects.
The referral system processes you use regularly should get your customers to recommend and encourage other people they associate with to seek out your products or services.
The key ingredient in making your referral system work is that your customer (raving fan) must understand and appreciate the value and benefit they receive from the product or service. This can be imparted during the point of contact or purchase with the business, staff, systems, and culture.
Acquiring customers at “break even” and making a profit on the back end. Without getting technical, if your business outfit is one that has a high probability of customers or clients coming back to repurchase frequently the same or different products or services from you, you need to make it a point to do everything within your business power to get customers into the buying stream as fast and as easily as you possibly can.
It only makes sense to quantify the return on business profit yearly from an average customer also known as the marginal net worth which a customer or client has to your business.
Until you do so, you can’t determine how much time, effort and most importantly how much expense you can afford to invest to acquire that customer or client in the first place.
Risk Reversal. What stops a client from making a purchase is the smell or mere thought of risk being passed on or created by the service or product.
This basically spells out that any time two people come together to transact in any business, one person is always asking the other to take on or assume more of the risk than they do. If your business model is one that asks your prospects to assume the risk in purchasing your product or service, many of them will not be willing to do it.
Furthermore, your customers will not begin to buy at anywhere close to their purchase capacity because they do not want to take on all the risk. The key is then to reduce or eliminate altogether the burden of risk on the transaction for your customer. This way, a lot more people will buy from you, and they will buy a lot more and a lot more — more than you might have projected.
Through guaranteeing the purchase and reversing the risk, you reduce any concerns from the customers’ perspective. You further cause everyone in your enterprise to raise the standards of performance they exert on behalf of those customers.
Last but not least, advertising, which is not just placing a billboard along the busy streets of your respective city.
While this in itself is not wrong, your business or any business should only advertise when what you have to say will be heard by a high enough concentration of people whom you want to be talking to such as real or qualified prospects — the relevant population.
Whenever you run an advertisement, print or online, it must at least provide the reader, listener or viewer with a self-serving advantage. Remember, it’s all about the customer, always. Never about you.
The views given herein are solely for information purposes; they are guidelines and suggestions and are not guaranteed to work in any particular way.
Robert Gonye is a Business Growth Expert and Influencer. He writes in his personal capacity. Comments and views: [email protected]
