As most top managers know, driving revenue is by no means an easy task. You get obsessed with finding the next “big thing” that will get you a lot of new customers, provide tons of new sales, and get you to the top of the world… or at least make your company the market leader.
But, more often than not, magic bullet does not exist, and you have to go back to basics and do the grunt work.
How to Boost Revenue With Current Product Offer
If you focus on your products & services, there are couple of things you can do to boost revenue. Probably the easiest would be providing bigger options on what you are already offering.
These are three tactics that we believe will work:
- Discounts – depending on the type of product/service, you might consider offering volume discounts, as well as supersized or bundled packages. This means getting less per unit, but it will increase company’s cash flow.
- Extended contracts – The same goes for extended contracts. In the short run you will get less from customers which choose this option, but you can get more in the long term from their loyalty, and upsell of additional products and services.
- Price points – You may also consider presenting three price points, if your offering can be bundled with different features included, and each price point can be well defined. Most customers are more likely not to go for the lowest price point, so you can use this to influence them to buy for the middle one.
Here’s a fairly transparent example of price points from Soundcloud:
Sometimes there is not much you can do with current products and services. If that is the case for your company, you should seriously consider introducing new product or service. You already know much about your current customers, about their needs, and you can leverage that to expand your offer and get new business from them. Expanded offering can also appeal to new customers.
Make the Most out of Your Current Clients
When we are talking about customers and getting new revenue, it is well known that it is easier to sell to existing customers than to new ones. Even 6 to 7 times cheaper. Especially if they are satisfied with what you sold them already.
- Let them know they are important – You don’t have to build a fully-fledged loyalty program, but you can introduce some smaller things to show your existing customers you value them. For instance, offer them to get your new product or service before you offer it to general public.
- Make them buy more – You can offer discounts or organize a frequent buyer program, to encourage them to buy again, and to buy more. You can tie the discount with them spending a certain amount, or you can give them something for free like one month’s subscription when they subscribe for a year. It can be anything that provides more value for them, and is still profitable for you.
- Personalized offering – If you have been good in data collecting about your customers, you can try customized promotions to appeal to their specific needs. You will surely get much better results, than with “one size fits all” offers.
- Referrals can get you far – While we are still talking about your (happy) customers, there is another thing you can do with them – encourage them to give you referrals. If they are happy, they won’t have a problem referring you, especially if there is something (small) in it for them as well.
Make Changes in Sales and Marketing approaches
Make sure you take a look at how your sales and marketing are working, and introduce some changes there that can bring new revenue into the organization.
For start, think about boosting your marketing efforts. It is obvious, but it does not necessarily mean spending big budgets on a large scale campaign. Plan carefully, test constantly, and spend more on channels that bring results.
Think about new distribution channels, and cross promotion – partnering with companies that sell to similar customers can bring new business that otherwise wouldn’t have found you.
Or you can review your pricing strategy. Lowering the prices by a small amount can mean enough new revenue to make up for the lower profit margins.
The last thing we’ll mention, but maybe not the last thing for you to try, is enabling your sales staff to sell more. If you introduce new products or services, your sales team can get a lot of new business by up-selling to your existing customers.
You can free your sales team by outsourcing your lead generation, too. Hire a professional agency to collect the leads for you and leave your team to do what they do best – sell.
Even if you don’t have anything new, but have a diversified offering, provide proper tools for your sales staff to discover customers that can be sold something else besides what they already have.
On the other hand, you can setup an incentive program for your sales team. Offer them bonuses, free trips, gifts, and they will be motivated to achieve better results.
With so many proposals on what to do to grow your sales, it can become a bit overwhelming. So first consider what might work for you, and do not implement all at once. Change one thing at a time, and measure everything you can, so you’ll know what did bring the results you wanted, and which things didn’t pan out.
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