The 5 proven ways to build your business

So, if you are like most business owners or sales professionals, you spend most of your waking hours thinking about customers, revenues and profits. After all, it makes perfect sense. Where would a business be without customers, revenue or profits? Well, at ActionCoach, we teach you that thinking about customers, revenue and profits are non-productive activities. You see, customers, revenue and profits are all outputs of a process that we teach all business owners. This process is a business chassis that is the single biggest business secret that you will learn this year. This chassis has been applied to thousands of businesses with outstanding results

What we teach business owners is the 5 proven ways to build your business. Simply put, if you focus on these 5 areas of your business, you will have more customers, more revenue and more profit than you can possibly imagine. It is not necessary to perform in an extraordinary fashion to achieve extraordinary results. Let me introduce you to the five ways to build your business: Lead Generation, Conversion Rate, Average Dollar Sale, Average Number of Transactions, and Profit Margins. Those areas are represented in the in the following equation:

Lead Generation x Conversion Rate = # Customers # Customers x Avg. Dollar Sale x Avg. # Transactions = Revenues Revenues x Profit Margins = $ Profits

So basically, this equation for profitability is applicable for any business, in any market, in any industry sector. Throughout all of these sectors of business, the equation for profitability stays the same.

Let's take a deeper look at how to grow your sales; Lead Generation: Because this is the most expensive strategy to implement, we always approach this area last. We look to make improvements in the other areas of our business first and once we have it running on all cylinders, we then look at strategies to generate more leads. In fact, I recently met with a business owner and we determined that we could double his business without generating anymore leads than he is currently generating. Once you double your business, how much money can you invest in lead generation?

Conversion Rate: We are really talking about your ability to convert your leads into customers. What is your current conversion rate? How do you become better at sales so that you can improve your conversion rate. Here is a tip to implement in your business today; Sales Scripts - Have you ever watched a product demonstration at a state fair? You know, the person up on the platform selling the knives that cut through shoes. You stop and watch and then you leave. You walk around and come back to watch again and you realize it is the same exact presentation. Why? Because it work!! So, have you scripted your sales process? Have you practiced your presentation until it is perfect? Great sales people script their sales process and practice until it is perfect.

# of Transactions: So, we have customers. We want them to buy from us more frequently. How often do we keep in touch with our customers? The #1 way to generate more transactions from our existing customers is-ask them. Sounds silly, but how often have you been talking to a customer about a product or service and they've said "I didn't know that you did that, I just bought that from XYZ company yesterday. Ask your customers to buy more from you. If they like you, they'd be happy to buy more frequently.

Average $ Sale: We are surrounded by this strategy every single day. Would you like fries with that? Would you like to super size that? Have you ever forgotten to ask your customers if they needed additional or complimentary items? Use a checklist. Have a checklist of items to be sure to ask every customer and have every employee complete the checklist for each sale. Pretty soon they will commit the practice to memory and you can eliminate the checklist.

Profit Margins: Here is the most effective strategy to improve your profit margins - raise your prices. If you raise your prices by 10%, you will lose customers. Customers that only care about price, customers that constantly cause you stress because they always want something for nothing, customers that you can do without. Raise your prices - you'd be amazed at the results.

They key to success in business is to test and measure several strategies at the same time. Figure out what works, what impact it will have on your business and how to build a marketing engine that delivers the business results you've dreamed about!

About the Author: Paul Lavoie is a Business Coach with ActionCOACH Business Coaching, the World's #1 Business Coaching team. To learn how to apply these principles to your business, contact Paul at 203.954.0035 x 11 or paullavoie@actioncoach.com.

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Next Month's issue we will talk about "How to go Greener" with Technology.

Thank you for your continued business and trusting Pilothouse Communications with your vital business communications. We are here to be your business partner in all communications- voice/data/video security.

Sincerely,