Want to bring in some money right away? Who doesn't? I'm going to ask you to slow down, take a step back, and take an objective look at your business and it's growth. There are basically three techniques that you can use to grow your business.
These techniques are:
1. Get more clients
2. Charge more
3. Increase the average number of visits clients make
Most people spend the majority of their time on the first technique -- getting more clients. Advertising and marketing their busy hearts out, the majority of businesses will spend most of their energy hunting for new prospects. This is the hardest of the three techniques. It requires more energy, more money, and more time than the other two techniques. It is also the only one of the three that involves asking someone you don't know -- and who doesn't know you -- to do business with you.
Let's take a look at the second technique -- charging more. I'm not going to get into number crunching here. How you charge your clients varies greatly from industry to industry. But I am going to ask you to play with your numbers a little bit. How much money would you add to your bottom line if you raised your prices $10? Or $100? Or more!
If you see 100 people a week and charge each of them $5 more per visit, that's an extra $500 a week. Times fifty weeks a year, that's $25,000 a year. Whether you sell vitamin supplements by the bottle or price your services by the hour or project, evaluate how your pricing compares with your competitors. Will five dollars make that much of a difference to you?
The third technique to grow your business is to increase the average number of times clients visit you. Let's say you are a coach and most of your clients coach with you once a month. What can you do to increase their visits to twice a month? What could you say to teach them how coaching with you more often will help them achieve their goals faster?
This doesn't just have to apply to businesses in the service industry. If clients visit you every two weeks to purchase vitamins (they come when they run out), evaluate ways to bring them to you half way through their vitamin supply. Change their purchasing patterns in a positive way.
I challenge you to look at your business and evaluate which of these three methods you could most easily change right away. Which one do you spend the most time and energy on right now, and which one can you easily spend some time on to increase revenues today?
