It may sound a little simple, but there are really only four ways to successfully grow your business, in other words to make it more valuable.

 

These four ways are:

    1. Increase the number of customers you have.
    2. Increase the frequency with which customers buy from you.
    3. Increase the average value of each sale.
    4. Increase the effectiveness of each process in your business.

All of the business development strategies you might implement will fall into one of these four categories.  Any other strategy may help you temporarily but it won’t grow your business. 

Paul McKibbin of SPS North West deals with the first of these and discusses some strategies for increasing the number of customers you have.

1.     Develop a unique selling point (USP)
Your USP is the reason why customers buy from YOU - it is something you have that is of real value to them and decides their buying decision in your favour. You may even have different USPs targeted towards different segments of your customer base.

 

2.     Tap the power of the phone.
An effective phone technique is really important in keeping prospects interested ? there’s no gain in spending money on generating leads only to turn them off the first time they call through careless call handling. With the right training, your team will have the focus to handle any call, and make it work to your business’ best advantage.

 

3.     Develop a sales system.

We all know a ‘natural’ salesperson. If you observe them, you’ll see they know how to get the prospect interested, how to keep them interested, and how to ask for the sale. They have a ‘sales system’ so learn from them. Adopting a systemised approach to selling, based on an effective sales method, shared by you and your team is a must-have for increasing your customer base.

 

Your marketing should focus on a specific group of people so it’s extremely important to understand what makes them tick. To acquire this knowledge you need to do your homework identifying your main market segments and profiling them according to their interests – some market research. Then, you can market in a more focused and cost effective way.

 

 

To learn more about how we can help you to do this and build up the value of your firm, or to look at some of the other services we offer, contact SPS now for a FREE discussion by calling our office in the North West on