Small Ways To Grow Your Business

What’s the fastest and lowest risk way to grow revenue in your business? Growing revenue not only improves cash flow and profitability, but according to the data in the Value Builder System, it also increases the value of your business. Businesses that are over the $10 million revenue mark will earn a higher multiple of earnings when the time comes to sell the business.

As growing revenue impacts both the current state of a business and its future value, this is naturally a topic we discuss with our clients often. When it comes to growth you want to consider the risk of growing a revenue stream. A high-risk growth strategy would be taking a new product/service into a new market area. While this may have a more appealing bright/shiny quality to it, if you’re focusing on both top line revenue and net profit, it’s good to start by maximizing your low risk growth opportunities.

The lowest risk opportunity for growing revenue is to sell more of the products/services you already offer to the markets that you currently work with. You know your profit margins and your business is already designed for this type of transaction, and unless capacity is an issue then there doesn’t tend to be a large cost to invest in this growth.

Tips for low-risk opportunities to grow revenue:

• Examine your customer list to see what products/services were purchased within the last two years and identify what else they should be purchasing. Start contacting them regarding other products/services that you offer. Your CRM might have the capacity to pull lists to start contacting today.
   
• Look at your sales process to ensure your team is your team is listening for and acting on cross-selling opportunities.
   
• Review your service systems to discover if they support cross-selling opportunities.
   
• Address issues that may stop your team from selling. Often there are products/services that team members might not want to sell for various reasons. For instance, they don’t like or are not trained in those products/services, they don’t make as much in commissions, or it’s a hassle to sell those products/services. There can be many simple barriers that when removed will boost your revenues, but it starts with understanding what the opportunities are and what barriers need to be removed.
   
• Ensure that your business has a good profile for each of its target markets that details where they work, live and play. The more you understand about your customers the easier it will be to identify strategies to engage them in purchasing more.
   
• Set expectations. It seems simple, but every member of your team should understand how their role should be contributing to reach the increased sales goals.
   
• Consider a price increase. This is a simple and sometimes needed way to increase revenues. You need to consider the market, your costs of goods, and how that impacts pricing on a yearly basis.

Before launching into bright and shiny high risk growth opportunities be sure to explore the lower risk, small but effective ways to grow your business. The Value Builder Score is a great way to baseline your business and show you the areas where growth and improvements will make your business stronger today as well as increase its value for when you are ready to exit.