Showing posts with label solution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label solution. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Add Value to Your Business

The purpose of creating a business is to sell it. When it comes time to sell, you want the success of your business to be dependent on systems and not on you. Therefore, you must work on your business as well as in it. You always want to keep the big picture in mind and not get immersed in the details. How do you approach this? Develop systems to enhance it.

There are just four ways to grow your business:
1. Increase the number of customers of the type you want.
2. Increase the frequency with which they deal with you.
3. Increase the average value of the sales transaction.
4. Improve the effectiveness of the processes in your business.

Remember that one of the four reasons for being in business is to have fun.
Your business is there for your benefit; you are not there for its benefit.


What you can measure, you can manage. If you are not measuring a process, it is almost certain that you are not managing it. Think about your business and what makes it profitable. Are you measuring these processes?

• How many customers do you have?
• How many new customers did you get during the last month and the last year?
• What was the source of these customers?

If you and your team are doing activities that you cannot measure, then the chances are that those activities are adding no value. If they are adding no value, why waste your time doing them?

Build your Unique Core Differentiators (UCD’S). This information bulletin is part of our UCD’S. What have you got?

Look for a second dimension in selling your product. Extended warranties, companion selling, etc.

Learn to really listen. Don’t prescribe a solution unless you really understand the problem. Cutting the price is the easy option - but there is often a better way. It will be harder, but you will earn more money and add more value to your business.

Lower the barriers to doing business with you. Some businesses still do not accept credit cards. (Have I hit a sensitive nerve here?) Should you be taking debit cards?

The more specific things you can tell, the more you can sell. What are the reasons your customers deal with you? Tell these reasons to others and see if you gain new customers.

Avoid changing horses in midstream. If you have tested or measured a system or a process and it works, stick with it until you develop an improved system or process.
Know the power of one. Direct your efforts to one customer or to one prospective customer who requires your service or product; don’t direct your efforts to those who don’t require them.

Learn the value of discovering key frustrations.
Systematize: have a specific way of doing every thing.

Set performance standards: have a best way of doing things.

Invert your pyramid and empower your team. The team you have in place can solve most day to day problems. They can do it faster and more effectively than you can. You just need a way of identifying the solution and applying it. Give them the skill and the authority.

Don’t just reverse the risk, remove it. If you give guarantees, you must have systems in place so that the only result will be the one where you will meet your guarantee.
Give your team a clear and detailed action plan. Be pro-active in following up on orders.
Create offers to add value and to encourage faster responses. If offers increase responses considerably, why run an advertisement without an offer?

Add a 3rd dimension to marketing your product. Consider a Host Beneficiary program. Who else is serving your customers? They want access to your customers. You want access to theirs. Find a way to work together to benefit both.

These ideas will only work if you implement them. As the Nike people say, "JUST DO IT!"