How do you grow your business? That is a question that occupies the minds of most business owners. Especially during these uncertain times with the effects of the COVID-19 crisis everywhere.
When you are the person in the foxhole and the bullets of everyday operational issues are flying all around its hard to
think about and plan for growing your business.
With that in mind here are 10 things that should dovetail into what you are already doing that can provide opportunities for incremental bottom and top line growth for your business.
And none of them are hard.
1. Mine untapped customer lists
Every small business should have and maintain a customer list. You should know more about what your customers have done with your business than they do.
Have a software tool
Maintain a customer list even if is just an excel spread sheet with contact information and purchase history.
If you need some other tool to manage that list there are many excellent software packages that help with customer relationship management also.
Quicken and Quickbooks both have customer list features as well.
Interact
Use your customer list to reach out and stay in contact.
Thank them for being your customer. Inform them of sales or special upcoming promotions. Send relevant industry or product usage information.
Offer occasional coupons or discounts. Let then know a new model or new product is available.
Offer some utility in your communications, don’t just constantly ask for new sales.
Free Sales
Remember your highest probability of new sales can come from satisfied customers who already know you and are familiar with your business and products.
2. Explore opportunities for automation
Automation can help save time, reduce errors and add value to your business.
Ask the automation question
Do you spend hours building reports that could be automated?
Are there data uploads or files that you have to generate manually?
Do you type in hundreds of invoices manually?
Are there other tedious or manual processes processes in your business that take away time from selling and servicing customers?
Consider ways to automate those things.
Pick the low hanging fruit
I have worked with several businesses and helped automate reports and data uploads allowing the employees to focus on more profitable pursuits. Many of the modern software tools and services have methods to automate certain activities. So investigate what is available to you.
Schedule automated bill pay where you can. Work with your vendors to get invoice files that can be uploaded to your accounting system directly so you don’t have to type.
If you sell subscriptions work with your payments vendor to setup recurring payments for your customers. It will save you and them time.
ABA – Always Be Automating
One of the great lines from the classic sales drama movie Glen Garry Glen Ross is ‘Always Be Closing‘.
In todays business climate I think the corollary to that is ‘Always be automating’. To stay competitive, reduce costs and increase our velocity we always need to be automating those things that can be.
Always be on the lookout for things that you can let the computers do.
Then take steps to automate all of those tedious repetitive steps to free up the one resource can can’t create more of — TIME.
3. Eliminate unnecessary expenses
You can’t change what you don’t know and expenses are one thing that we do have some measure of control over if we take the time to review.
Get a list
Create a monthly, quarterly and yearly list of expenses.
Schedule a few minutes to review the list and ask ‘Do we still need that‘? Look for things you pay for but don’t use in a while. Can you do without or make a different arrangement?
Ask your suppliers
Schedule meetings with your vendors and see if you can consolidate orders or bundle services and save.
Ask about other ways to reduce your spend. Vendors are usually very willing to discuss ways to keep your business.
Clean house
Of course many of your expenses you will still need but, over time, as your needs change you may find things you can scale back or eliminate altogether saving you money.
Recently in the business I work for I realized by this type of review I had some IT related subscriptions that I needed to scale back because I no longer needed that level of service.
This is now saving me money each month.
4. Consider price increases
A wise business man and mentor once told me that ‘price increases are FREE PROFIT’. And that is true. You have no customer acquisition costs when you raise prices.
Pricing is an art
Pricing products and services is always a bit of an art. Sometimes you have to be price competitive so you don’t have much room. But you should be reviewing your pricing on at least an annual basis and making adjustments.
I am not advocating indiscriminate price raises. You can lose customers in that case.
However, you should be making as informed pricing decisions as you can. Do not be afraid to charge what your product or service is worth. But don’t get greedy. I believe smaller incremental change is better than giant leaps.
Knowledge is power
Some business owners tend to underprice ‘just to get the business‘ — so be aware of any personal bias you have.
Make sure you are market aware of the pricing of your products and services. Make sure that for any premium over market you charge you can make the value proposition case with your customers.
Increase Execution
A couple of years ago we raised prices on a subscription product. It had been a number of years since any price increases had been made. But we took the time to send an update to our customers and explain the increase and re-iterate the value proposition our product brought. Our customers were OK with that. We didn’t lose business and in fact had a couple customers ask why it had taken so long.
Make pricing intelligence gathering and review part of your ongoing tactical and strategic planning.
5. Investigate unclaimed tax benefits
Dealing the taxes is one of my #1 least favorite activities. But, it is necessary. Busy owners can overlook or miss deductions, grants and other incentive programs just because we are too busy running the business to keep you with the myriad of tax law updates.
Schedule a review
Schedule a review with your CPA or tax professional to identify any tax breaks or benefits you or your business may be not taking advantage of.
The federal and state governments are always tinkering with tax rules, and incentives, especially for small business. Most business owners don’t have time to keep up with the changes.
Industry associations are a resource
Many times your industry associations keep a close eye on government incentives and regulations. Most will also have resources that can help you identify what is available to you. Become an member and use those outlets to network and identify new opportunities.
Make it a habit
It is worth your time to make this type of review and investigation each year to make sure your business is getting all that it qualifies for.
6. Enhance your online presence
Your online presence can either enhance your business perception or scare customer away.
Improve perception
A good online presence for your business can sell for you 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
A good online presence can enhance potential customer perception of your business and what the value to them may be.
Take the time and effort to make sure your online brand reflects the perception you want created in your customers minds.
Priming future sales
In our business we re-designed our web site last year to improve its utility, information content and styling. A few months after we launched the new site a prospect who found us by the site said to one of our sales reps ‘If your products are as good as your web site then they must be really good‘. We have a nice site but I don’t thing we will win any design awards.
The point is that a useful, stylish, mobile friendly, easy to navigate site with good information for your customers can greatly enhance potential customer perception of your business. And prime new sales.
7. Entertain cooperatives/partnerships
Think about vendors or adjunct business you could partner with for a promotion or new product.
Help is out there
Many times vendors and suppliers will help with promotions and marketing for special sales or new product introductions. Ask them for their ideas and what they can do with you.
Are there businesses you know of that sell complementary products and services to yours that you could partner with on a promotion or bundle?
Strength in numbers
In talking with your vendors, competitors or business’ complementary to yours you might come up with new ideas for products, bundles, promotions and sales that enhance your market reach and facilitate growth.
8. Leverage underutilized assets
Do you have a customer list you don’t engage with (from #1 above)?
Do you have excess inventory or underutilized machinery? Could you sell that or rent time to another business that needs similar?
Take a quick inventory
Take a mental inventory of your business and see what is around that you could leverage further.
Do you have extra space you could potentially sub lease to an even smaller business?
Work Together
Do you have some expertise that could be valuable in a consulting role through your industry association?
One of my clients is in a very seasonal business and they have a fleet of trucks for deliveries which are way underutilized in the off season. They are investigating using their trucks in the off season to provide logistics for other companies who have transportation needs out of phase with theirs.
Almost every business has some assets that are underutilized and be leveraged further to increase growth.
9. Improve financing arrangements
Almost all small business need some types of finance instruments to smooth the peaks and valleys of revenue and expenses.
Easy Credit
Many small business use credit cards for line of credit type financing. This can be convenient and easier to setup than a traditional bank line of credit. However convenient, this can increase your costs due to the high interest rates some companies charge.
Work your network
Talk with your bank. Find out what they offer. Talk to other banks.
Talk to other business owners and see who or what they use. Many cities have economic development offices that can also help identify financial resources availability to small business. Call them.
Maintain flexibility
If your business requires line of credit or debt financing work to make your cost of capital as low as possible while retaining the flexibility you need.
If you can reduce your financing charges a few percentage points by new or different arrangements that is money in your pocket.
10. Expand marketing
With a little spend you many increase your message reach greatly.
Go social
Are you using the best social media outlets for your audience? Making posts on the popular channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn can easily increase your reach and access to potential customers.
If you have video capability you can post some videos to YouTube with good key words sprinkled in the descriptions and titles, since it is now the #2 internet search engine in the world.
Add some ads
For online marketing Facebook, Google and YouTube all offer highly targeted ad placements.
Trade industry publications are another potential source. Many of those publications maintain subscriber lists with very detail demographic information on the readership. This allows you to engage in very targeted advertising.
Depending on your product or service an online webinar can be a cheap and easy way to reach new customers as well.
Is there a local outlet to market to such as the local radio station, high school program or yearbook that would target your audience.
What about hyper local apps like the “next door app”?
Don’t neglect the content
Are you generating good content that provides utility to your visitors on your site that shows you are a thought leader in your area? Write a blog and provide useful information to your audience. Post it to your social media audiences.
Have you thought of an email marketing campaign to reach out to a known email list for a special promotion or a relevant article? These are easy ways to increase your influence and reach.
Keep up with your customer avatar
Spend some time researching where your customers hang out online or offline and then create small tests to validate a given outlet. Any marketing you do will be vastly more effective if you hit the areas where your custom avatar is already hanging out.
Start small and iterate
In most of the online ad services you have pretty fine grained control over your spend. So you can try small things, evaluate, and iterate to gain better ROI without spending tons of money.
Sometimes smaller targeted, incremental spend and effort can gain customers using these outlets without betting the farm.
Takeway
Sometimes it is the small consistent efforts over time that can yield big payback.
These 10 tactics are things that can be done without huge investments or complete business transformations. I have seen them produce results.
What are your tactics for growth?