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Did you know there are three and a half ways to grow your business?

There are many consultants running around telling business owners there are only three ways to grow - not quite true.

OK, way number one - put your prices up. Easy

Way number two - Persuadeyour existing customers to buy more. Almost easy.

The way to do this is to think about what you can provide as an 'extra' to your existing customers, then build a system to make sure they get offered the chance to buy this, and offered in a way that they are unlikely to refuse. So if you run a fast food burger chain, you might train your staff to say "would you like to supersize that, for an extra £x" every time any one orders anything. What additional products or services could you offer your customers?

The third way of course is to get new customers. That is hard work. And expensive. So it makes sense to implement ways 1 and 2 first.

Lets put some figures to this. Suppose you have a business with 100 customers, all buying a product at a cost of £100. That product costs £70 to buy, so the margin is 30%. So sales are £100,000 and Gross Profit is £30,000.

Now lets implement the three ways, and lets try for a 10% improvement on each way. Put prices up 10% - easy. We introduce a system which persuades ten customers to buy an extra product each. We do some marketing and find ten new customers.

The effect - Gross Profit grows from £30,000 to £48,400 a 61% increase. A significant growth from marginal and fairly modest improvements.

Now, what about the half?

Achieving sales growth is like filling a leaky bucket with water. You can sell more to new and existing customers, but you will always lose customers. Some will retire go out of business or die. However, most (65% to be precise) of the customers you lose are leaving because of 'perceived indifference'. They think you don't care about them! So the extra 'half' a way to grow your business is to let them know you care. Regularly send out a survey, ask them what they think about your customer service, ask them what they don't like about your business. You might get some useful feedback, but if you get nothing back you have achieved something - they know you care about what they think!