SUPERFAST WAYS TO INCREASE PROFIT Action Points 13 Fast Ways to Grow Your Business 1. Triple your communication with current customers Visit, call, mail or email them more often Create or offer new products i.e. Increase your range or variety at higher or lower price points. Offer other people products that you don t or can t create that compliment your products - this is also known as host beneficiary arrangements or JV arrangements or becoming an affiliate for the other company. 2. Triple your communication with potential customers. Increase the recency AND frequency of your communications Advertise more, start a newsletter weekly, monthly or bimonthly Send industry or educational reports to help your prospects do their job better or information to help them make their purchase decisions easier or more informed Send relevant books or articles that could interest them Send little gifts they might find useful and appreciate 3. Put your price up Almost in every case you can put your price up by 10% or more with very little, if any loss in sales. Most business generate10% - 20% net profit. By increasing your price by just 10% you will increase your profits by 50% to 100% 4. Ask for referrals There are many ways to do this but the simplest way is to ask but don t only say, can you refer anyone to me, say thanks for the order is there anyone else - any of your friends, relatives or business colleagues (be specific in saying this) that would be interested in the same deal we have just offered you? Another way to do this is to offer to provide any of their friends, relatives, business colleagues a free sample or free trial/gift of your product.
Or you could simply provide your customer with discount coupons to give to their friends, relatives or colleagues or even better offer to send these yourself with a letter or email with your customer s endorsement. You can even find other businesses with customers that would be interested in your product or service and make an arrangement with these businesses to make the same offers outlined above to their customer list. In the online world this is known as JV partnerships or these businesses becoming affiliates for your products/services and this is used very frequently today in many industries online. 5. Re establish contact with old customers This needs little explanation. If you have been in business for a while, and not kept in contact with old customers, this is one of the deadly sins of business which recency AND frequency will now help to avoid happening in the future. However, the first thing to do is to go back and re establish contact with a call, a letter, an email, a gift or any idea that will re establish that relationship. 6. Increase the average transaction price Here s a list of brain storming ideas on how to do this in your business. 1. Increase Your Prices (already outlined in point 3) 2. Up Sell to more expensive products 3. Cross Or Add On Sell other products 4. Down Sell this can be used to sell customers who may not buy your regular item but would by a cheaper of lower grade version and therefore avoid losing the sale. 5. Give your customer a Check or shopping list to prompt added sales 6. Use A Questionnaire 7. Offer Payment Terms 8. Carry or create more Exclusive or Premium products- develop a product pyramid 9. Rearrange Store Layout or Improve Store Merchandising 10. Introduce Impulse Buys 11. Improve Product Packaging 12. Sell With An Either/Or Question - do you want this or that? 13. Create Package Deals 14. Create Bulk Buy Deals 15. Gift With $XX Purchase 16. Charge Consulting Fees on top of your product cost. 17. Sell add-on Service Contracts 18. Sell Extra Warranty/Insurance 19. Train Your Team 20. Use Sales Scripts 21. Stock More High Priced Ranges 22. Offer Home Delivery
23. Charge For Delivery/Post & Package 24. Customer Incentives For Bigger Purchases e.g. Fly Buy Points 25. Sales Team Incentives For Bigger Sales 26. Stop Discounting 27. Give Away Perceived Value with low real cost 28. In Store demonstrations 29. Educate On Value, Not Price 30. Offer Bonus s - 4 For The Price Of 3 Offers, Buy 2 Get One Free Offers 31. Suggest Most Expensive First 32. Have A Minimum Dollar spend Or Minimum Order amount 33. Allow Lay-By 7. Create time limited offers Create a sale or price deadline for purchases Include scarcity to limit supply to increase and encourage forward purchasing Remove bonus offer for missing deadlines for purchases 8. Use Long Copy Adverts Here are some examples. If you can t do this yourself, we recommend you pay a professional to help you with your copy as it will be worth every cent. SEE BELOW
9. Create Testimonials
Call happy customers and ask them if they will be happy to provide a testimonial in writing, recorded over the phone, or via video. Use these testimonials on your website, in your store, on your brochures, in your sales presentations. People need social proof and use this as a way to help them make decisions. This is essential you have this in your business no matter how large or small. 10. Ask Customers what they want from your business? There is no more effective way of improving your business in ways you would not think of yourself. You can do this formally or informally, cheaply by making the calls yourself and asking one question if there was one thing we could do to improve our business or service what would that be? Or you can employ a research firm to do this for you - this will cost a lot more and is not always necessary. Many people do this as they are afraid to hear or ask their customers what s right and what s wrong, but this is where the gold lies, as there is more value in finding out what s wrong rather right. We recommend you do this yourself especially if your business is not going so well, and you will be amazed at what happens! 11. Offer an Extra Ordinary Guarantee. There are many ways to do this but if you are not doing this, we guarantee you are missing out on sales. Any refunds you give will be far less than the extra sales you make. If you are afraid to do this it means you don t have confidence in your product(s) and you should focus on improving your product or building in more value to this. You do not have to only offer a 100% money back guarantee although this is the most commonly used. You can offer double or triple your money back, you can offer replacement guarantees, you can offer less tangible guarantees (guaranteed to give you the best nights sleep, guaranteed the best steak in town, guaranteed to lose 5 pounds, guaranteed to last 50 000km) Guarantees should be used to remove the risk or perceived risk of doing business with you from the customer and take away any barrier to them making a decision to buy. Make it unusual and different to your competition. Make it extraordinary so customers feel very secure. 12. Increase the number of marketing approaches you use. Its essential you seek other and new ways to market your business,
Seek new ways to advertise or promote your business you have not tried before For this unless you have expertise in this area, we suggest you employ an expert who can help you with this and guide you through this maze but it will be well worth it. 13. Test everything This is one of the most important things we can tell you in this lesson. Sound obvious but very few people do this well or do this at all Test small and if it does not work you have not lost much. If it works roll out big. If you are doing for example email marketing, send out 100 emails before you send out the next 10 000. If you are running a new advert test it once and if it works, run it again and again, if not drop it and try a different advert or other medium. Test, Test, Test everyday and everything Then track your responses so you know what s working and what s not.