The three strategic steps you must take to grow any business:
- Get more customers
- Get them to buy more often
- Get them to spend more each time they buy
1. Get more customers.
It takes time, effort, and resources. Not to mention knowledge and a plan.
Time- The longer you work at anything the more the results, it’s simple.
Effort- People who work hard have great results.
Take the time to sharpen your ax before you work it.
Where is the gold? The #1 objective is to get the phone to ring. Therefore, the #1 resource is a ringing phone. Where can you get one with the least effort? By buying phone numbers of former businesses and by buying businesses.
Resources: You need money or something that works like money to pay for marketing, advertising and/or buying businesses. Your most valuable commodity is your expertise. Sit down and make a list of ways you can sell , barter, merge or trade your expertise for tangible assets.
Plan: Begin to list your ideas and results from hard thinking and meditating. Build these into a plan. A plan is simply plots on a timeline for an orderly execution or your strategies.
Now the secret to a successful functioning plan.
Don’t do it once. Keep thinking, adapting, testing, trying and scheduling the strategies of your plan. Do it several times a week. Do not expect to come up with the perfect solution the first time. Repeat and make it a habit to list and schedule strategies.
2. Getting your customers to buy more often.
Often we think that we need them to buy our main service more frequently. If our main service is plumbing and we wait for something to break, we may not have an opportunity to do business with this customer for a year or longer. Now I know you are working and thinking on how to sell more plumbing services already. First let’s look at your other assets. Anytime you have someone willing to do business with you = asset.
So let’s say you have one customer, and one skill or trade. When combined they are likely to produce a business transaction. This is a repeatable process but it takes time for these two events to come together often unless we make something happen. Come up with one or more additional assets, what else can we sell to this customer? For example, additional plumbing products such as water heaters, water conditioning, high grade water filtration, etc. If you go outside of plumbing, then what can you offer? Roofing, landscaping, cabinets, electrical, and the list can go on…
Make a list and brainstorm a couple of times a week on how you could add to the services you offer your clientele. Then, select the methods of letting them know you offer those services.
3. Getting them to spend more each time.
This requires either a very skilled sales person or a very highly effective selling tool like
The New Flat Rate Menu Pricing System.
If you choose to go the sales person route then you probably already know how to hire the right people and train them on your methods. However you must be careful not to violate rule #1 of selling. “Everybody hates it when you try to sell them something.” So your sales people must be highly trained in the art of schmoozing. Remember step 2 is getting them to buy more often, so if you scare them off with high pressure selling tactics you will mess up the entire plan. Be careful with this step.
Now if you elect to use a Menu Pricing System then you do not need sales people at all. You simply let your customers choose from a list of preprinted options and then collect the payment or deposit, schedule the work, and let the business grow. Menu Pricing isn’t your typical flat rate pricing. I know this is only a high level view of many details that would need to be implemented. For starters, let’s provoke our brains.
