By Greg Nunan
Would you like to do more business than you are now? If you’re anything like most self-employed entrepreneurs, the answer is yes.
It can be difficult to focus on growing your business when there are so many moving parts to attend to, however, focusing on growth can help you get to the point where you have a business not just a job.
Whether you’d like more revenue, more profit, or more of both, there are three choices that you have to grow your business. Let’s take a look at each option.
Option 1: More Clients
What most people think of first when it comes to growing their businesses is obtaining more clients. Whether you increase your advertising budget or hire an expert to do SEO work for your website, increasing your source of new clients will help you to generate more revenue for your business.
Although bringing in more clients is the most well-known way to grow a business, it can be the most resource intensive. For some businesses, the other methods to create growth can be easier to implement and more profitable.
Option 2: More Frequency
The second guaranteed way to grow your business is to increase the number of transactions that you have with each of your customers.
Shampoo companies are widely known for using this technique to increase their bottom lines. The widely known slogan, “Lather, Rinse, Repeat” instantly doubled shampoo sales by instructing clients to use twice as much product as they normally would if they only lathered once.
Option 3: More Revenue Per Transaction
The third way to grow your business is to increase the amount that you bring in with each transaction. This method focuses on getting your customers or clients to spend more each time they do business with you.
Although it’s a bit taboo now, McDonald’s restaurant made the phrase “Supersize Me” famous, popularizing the upsell, one of the best ways to increase revenue per transaction. By upselling, you offer an upgraded product or service experience to take in more money with each sale.
Similar to the upsell, cross selling is another way to increase the size of each sales transaction. A cross sell is the action of selling an additional product or service to go along with the one your customer has already selected.
We can again refer to McDonald’s when thinking about the cross sell. Instead of supersizing your order, the cross sell would be, “Do you want fries with that?”
Creating more revenue per transaction is actually my favorite of the three options because it includes the absolute easiest way to increase your revenue and profit, raising your prices. Most self-employed business owners, charge too little for their services because they feel uncomfortable charging as much as their larger competitors.
Wrapping Up
The real win comes when you can stack these methods on top of each other. Your business will grow exponentially when you find ways to bring in new clients, have them purchase more frequently, and increase the dollar amount that they spend with each transaction.
Regardless of which method you choose, these are the three methods to grow your business… Time to make it happen!
