Selling strategies that work in every business

In my 30+ years in business, primarily in the sales arena I’ve learned a lot about the good, bad and the ugly of how to grow client base, channels and primarily profits. It’s pretty simple when you sit down and think about it. There are ONLY 5 ways to grow your business and profits.

They are in no specific order:
First: Keep the customers you have. This means paying attention to them and always keeping in mind the “what’s in it for them” mantra.
Second: Bring in more customers. Obvious, but often overlooked or sometimes thinking that all new customers are equal. They aren’t and lots of time can be squandered managing less profitable clients at the expense of the A customers…
Third: Increase the average transaction (order) size. Remember it usually requires the same amount of effort to sell big as it does to sell smaller.
Fourth: Increase the frequency of purchases. Again obvious, but often overlooked or not fully taken advantage of. Think outrageously about offers and incentives to buy more often. McDonalds, Subway and others used this strategy in positioning itself as a 3 mealtime source with special lattes, breakfast, lunch and dinner offerings.
Finally: Say NO to bad customers/prospects. There must be a fit and if early discovery of a problem the best course is to FIRE them. Hard to do and goes against everything we as businessmen/women were led to believe, but it must be done. The job of sales arguably is not only to qualify, but also disqualify.

In short, keep what you have, bring in more customers, sell larger amounts to them and sell to them more often. Do one or more of these and your business grows..do two or more of these well and your business can grow by quantum leaps and bounds.