In today’s business environment too often business owners are constantly chasing new leaders, continually investing more and more into marketing, and forgetting about simple strategies that can help them effectively and quickly grow their revenues and profits.

You see, I remember hearing this saying years ago that, “A customer is a customer is a customer.” And once you acquire a customer and you start working with them, it’s essential that you nurture the relationship, and you help that customer buy from you again, and again.

Too often your clients or customers don’t really understand the depth of how you can help them. They came to you with an initial problem which you solved, but the conversation never went on from there. Now I’m not saying you should just sell anything and everything to them, you still have to fulfill a need that they have, or solve a problem that they have. But more and more we need to be communicating effectively and consistently with our clients and customers in order to achieve increased revenue and profits without having to work any harder.

So here are eight simple strategies that you can implement quickly that are going to help you increase your revenues and profits

Number one is follow up on all leads.

This is too easily pushed to the side. You see, we work hard, we invest money into generating inquiries and leads, but we don’t hunt, we don’t hustle to get them to cross the line. Or we might send a proposal or a quotation, follow up once or twice, and we just let it be. See you need to followup relentlessly, followup, followup, followup, whether it’s an email, a phone call, an SMS. Followup is critical. If you can improve your conversion rate quickly, simply and by implementing a simple follow-up system and it’s a system, not just random followup, you’ll see an increase in your bottom line.

Number two, communicate all of your products or services to your clients regularly.

If you’re not sending a newsletter at least once a month educating your clients and showing other products or services that you offer, then you’re leaving money on the table. A simple frequent communication schedule where you add value and also share other products or services that you offer is critically important and will see increased sales quickly.

Number three, have a price increase.

When was the last time you had a price increase? Many businesses have had the same pricing for years, and the only person that has a problem with increasing the prices is you. Most organizations that I work with, when we recommend a five to 10 percent increase in price, they’ll wrestle with it, but when they implement it, they don’t lose a single customer. And how about this, what about the compounding effect that this will have when ongoing you’re now charging higher prices for your current services, and your delivery costs haven’t increased one cent?

Number four, allow payment terms.

If you’re selling higher ticket items, you may want to consider things like After-Pay or Zip-Pay because what that will do is that will help to increase the average spend that your customer has. Now yes there is a small cost to this, but if we can negate that by the increase in average spend, then providing customers with a payment plan option may be a way to increase their spend with you, and hence increase your revenue and profitability.

Number five, loyalty programs.

I’m surprised that every business doesn’t have a loyalty program. These days you go to most well known retail stores, and they’ll offer you to sign up to their loyalty program. Now you don’t want just to become a ‘me too’ loyalty program, you want to make sure that you create a loyalty program that’s meaningful to you and your customers. It may offer incentives that they can’t get in the free market. You may do VIP nights or days or again, you may communicate differently through a different newsletter. You may have different status levels as they do with the airline programs where you go from a bronze to a silver to a gold to a platinum, based on spend and other activities.  But a good loyalty program will number one, help keep your customers longer. And number two, have them spending more with you.

Number six, create an upsell or a more significant option.

Mcdonalds has done this for years, you know, would you like to upsize that? Would you want to go from the regular size to the large size? Every organization can find something where they can increase the sale. It might be the number of garments you’re purchasing; it could be a service where you go from the basic service to adding additional features and benefits. Come up with an option that gives your customers the opportunity to go up to the next level.

Number seven, cross-sell.

This is the, “Would you like fries with that?” And again, I use Mcdonalds as an example because they’re the best at it. Whoever thought of having fries with burgers? I mean it was just years and years ago it wasn’t even thought of. But now it’s just, “Would you like fries with that?” And if you think about your products and services, there’s always an add-on. There’s always something that they need that goes with your services. So you want to think of some examples. If you’re in retail it could be an accessory. Online shopping carts do this really well where they say, “People who bought this product also bought this, this, and this.” You want to consider the cross-sell because again, the customer already knows, likes, and trusts you. So you’ve just got to put something of value in front of them.

And number eight is you need to seed the need.

This is more relevant to service-based businesses but can be used for product-based companies as well. If you’re an appointment-based business, you need to at the time you’re seeing them, and they’re paying you money, book the next appointment or book the following 10 appointments, whatever frequency you’re going to do this. If you’re dependent on each time the person having to go away, remember to call, you’re leaving money on the table. You need to make sure those appointments are booked then and there. Another thing is if you’re selling products, think about the usage time and then time the communication … We worked with a supplement company and they knew that the average reorder time was around about four weeks, and that was if you were buying supplements, that was the amount in the packet. So what we did is we implemented at three weeks and four days an SMS that would go out and incentivize the customer the repurchase the same order, but it would also then provide other opportunities, whether upsells or cross-sells, in that same communication. So seeding the need is critically important.

So, in conclusion, you want to think about:

• How can we get more from what we’ve got?
• The clients and customers that we’re serving, how can we help them achieve faster, achieve more, buy more of our products and services?  

This will be critical to you growing a sustainable business because otherwise, you’re just going to be chasing more leads after more leads after more leads.