-
Win
new customers of the right type.
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Increase
the number of times they deal with you.
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Increase
your average sale or ‘transaction value.’
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Improve
the effectiveness and processes within your business to ensure
achievement of the first 3!
This
is the last but definitely not least way to grow you business. It’s this
step that ties it all together. Without it, it is very UNLIKELY that your
business would achieve any of the first three.
Most
business owners focus their marketing energy on winning customers.
However, getting your customers to come back to your business more often
is vital to the long-term health and profitability of your business. As is
increasing your average sale. To do all that, though, certain processes
must exist within your business. And that’s what you’ll learn more
about here.
Once
again, there are many, many ways to improve the processes in your business
to win more customers, keep them coming back more often, and spend more
each time. Here you’ll find just some of those key strategies to do just
that and the topics you could be working through with the Business Growth
Team at FVBK.
Issues
like improving the service offered to your customers, understanding the
power of being polite, using thank you notes, having fun and helping your
customers have fun, too, would all help you win more customers, keep them
coming back, and increase your average sale. However, without changing and
improving some of the processes in your business, this simply won’t
happen.
Fully
understanding and finding out whether your business is suffering from ‘perceived
indifference’—where you’re losing nearly 7 out of 10 inquiries
because prospective customers feel you’re ‘indifferent’ toward them—is
one step. Changing the processes within your business—for example, the
way a customer is greeted in the store, the way the phone is answered, and
training your team to understand the effects of this phenomenon—is
required to take it to the second step. The step where it actually makes a
difference to your sales.
‘Working
ON your business, not IN it’ is another critical area. If you, as the
business owner or manager, are stuck day in and day out handling the
day-to-day operations of the business, the growth of that business will be
slow. Simply, you won’t have time to implement the ideas you’ll
discover here and improve the business. By working ON your business and
establishing processes to help you do that, you will.
It
means you’ll be able to step outside of the day-to-day activities of the
business, look objectively at your business as a whole, and grow your
business from there.
Building
a business based on functions rather than people is important, too. You
see, most businesses are built around specific people rather than the
jobs, or functions, those people perform. Changing your business to one
that is focused on functions first and that slots the right people into
those functions will help you grow your business.
eloping
systems and manuals to map out specific tasks will also help you do that.
Edward W. Demming (redesigner of the Japanese car industry) completed a
study showing that only 4% of mistakes in business were due to human
error. That is, particular people making a mistake. The other 96% was due
to a lack of systems.
You
see, systems clearly spell out how to do every single task your business
needs to complete to serve customers and make a profit. As such, it ‘s
important they’re developed and documented in manuals that can be used
for training team members, delegating work, and using day to day. These
systems and manuals make it clear for every single team member what needs
to be done and how, leaving you more time to develop the business.
Establishing
new ‘performance standards’—ideal standards of performance required
to serve your customers face-to-face or over the phone, or to produce or
deliver the product or service successfully and profitably—are vital.
Sometimes
turning your services into ‘products’ can improve the processes within
your business dramatically. In fact, this strategy could put you head and
shoulders above your competition. Often, service businesses in particular
need to start thinking about their services as products and setting up
processes in their businesses to do so. That way, they’ll get clear on
the hard costs of delivering that ‘product’ and so on. They’ll have
to treat their business operations like a production-based business. By
doing so, profits could increase significantly.
Understanding
your real purpose of being in business and establishing the ‘mission in
life’ of your business can help you build better processes to met that
purpose and increase sales with customers. It can also give your team
members clearer direction.
Likewise,
understanding and addressing your ‘strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats’ is important to your business development. It will also
ensure that you maximize those strengths and opportunities to win more
customers, keep them coming back, and spending more each time. And
minimize any problem areas.
Completing
an analysis of your industry, your competitors, and market research could
help you make sure your processes to achieve the first 3 ways to grow your
business are better than your competitors. And give you a leading edge.
In
fact, measure your current operation performance, delivery record,
customer happiness, and so on and ask this question:
‘What
is the one thing I could do in my business that is impossible to do, but
would completely transform my business forever?’
You
answer can help you build a competitive advantage in the processes within
your business—and increase sales as a consequence.
Understanding
why the word ‘team’ is so critical could improve the processes and
your working environment dramatically. So much so that you could find
yourself delegating more and more, giving you the free time you need to
work ON your business rather than IN it.
Creating
processes to help find and keep team members easily is valuable for the
growth of your business too. If you don’t have a means of sourcing new
team members, qualifying them, and inducting them into your business, you’ll
struggle with growth, constantly trying to find the ‘right people.’ So
it is vital.
Training
is another pivotal area for improving the processes within your business
and as such achieving improvements in the first 3 areas. You see, building
team member skills is the only way you can get them to change for the
better within your business. Regardless of whether it’s customer
service, phone answering techniques, computer skills, or technical
training, it will be extremely important to the ongoing development of
your business.
Setting
goals and completing a ‘Business Plan’ can also ensure that your
business develops in every area and that your processes improve.
Improving
processes to control costs is also a key leverage point in generating more
profit for you.
And
much, much more.
Even
on briefly reviewing these ideas, you may have discovered some ideas you
might not have tried in your business. To really increase your number of
customers, the number of times they deal with your business, and your
average sale, you must improve the processes within your business. That
way, you, your team, and your business will be able to implement new ideas
in full and grow the profit for your business. To do so, it will be
critical to really learn, understand, and implement these ideas in full.
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