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Greetings!
Well, this week you get a personal story. . . one that I hope will help you as much as it has helped me.
About ten days ago, I got curious about my business. Specifically, I was interested in what my sales from last year could teach me about my business. Of course, I thought I already new everything about my sales. . . but I was WRONG!
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AVERAGE PROJECT SIZE
First I looked at my total revenue and divided that by the number of projects I did.That yielded an average project size of $1,600. There were several much larger projects, and there were about 8 $500 projects. And there were a lot of projects in the $1200-2400 range.
Interesting factoid, but what does this mean? Well, if I wanted to double my business, I'd have sell twice as many projects. . . OR sell projects that average $3200. With so many businesses reacting to the economic conditions, increasing the size of my average sale probably isn't a strategy that I can count on. But I could sell twice as many projects. I'd just have to move faster! This was my first interesting discovery.
WHERE DID MY BUSINESS COME FROM?
I listed every project I did last year and started grouping them by where that project came from. I'm lucky in that 100% of my work came from word-of-mouth marketing. So I'm interested in what individuals or groups were most effective for me last year. I found that I have six relatively effective sources for my business. . . but two were real surprises!
SURPRISE #1: BNI
In mid-October last year, I joined BNI, the world's largest referral organization. (Read more about BNI.) Although I was a member for only 2.5 months last year, referrals from this group were a good chunk of my overall revenue for 2008. I definitely will be cultivating these opportunities in 2009!
SURPRISE #2: US Green Building Council
This was a shocker! Another large portion of my revenue came from a group that isn't based on generating referrals at all. I hadn't recognized what a key opportunity I have here.
I am fairly well-known around the state of Arizona in the USGBC. They know OF me, or they know me, but most don't know anything about my business. Yet, this group was a cash cow for me last year. What would explain this?
THE INSIGHT
I'm not the brightest guy around, so I had to think about this for a couple days. And then inspiration struck. This groups is composed mainly of people in the building industry: architects, planners, engineers, builders, subcontractors, interior designers, etc. I bet there isn't another web technology company in the state that is a member of the USGBC! I have my own "private" market niche here!
You can be sure that I am now at work cultivating this group and making sure people I meet there understand what my business can provide for their companies!
SO WHAT?
How does this exploration into Sigma Web's 2008 revenue help you? Do the research on last year for YOUR business, and look at where each piece of business came from. See what you can discover that will suggest how you can generate more revenue this year.
Then think about what groups you could join (or already belong to) that, by their very nature, have two critical characteristics:
- The nature of the group is such that it is unlikely to have another member that does what you do, and
- the group has members that need your product or service.
I've never read this tip in any business book or blog post. In the past few days, it has already yielded two new website opportunities, an opportunity to help a business get found in the search engines, and a brand new referral source that I had never even thought of before!
You can do this, too! In fact, I'd like to know your results. When you look at your business information from last year, what new discoveries did you find that point the way to a more profitable year in 2009? Please share - maybe that will spur my thinking some more.
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