Ramping up your company and achieving an ideal growth rate isn't something that is going to happen overnight. Having said that, it's also something that can happen a lot faster than most people expect, too. Growing your business quickly and efficiently is less the product of one major move and is more about a series of smaller ones that, when taken in tandem, add up to something more meaningful than any one technique could have been on its own.
Therefore, if you truly want to ramp up your business quickly without sacrificing quality or skipping out on that critical promise you're making to your customers, there are a few key things you should keep in mind.
It All Comes Back to Differentiation
One of the keys to ramping up your business quickly without sacrificing the quality that your customers depend on has less to do with what problem you're going to solve for your audience and is more about how you're going to solve it.
Meaning, that the "how" of your business is just as important as the "what" and "why" — if not more so. There are so many different companies operating within your industry right now that, from the perspective of your audience, a lot of them start to bleed together. They become interchangeable in their minds and, as a result, everyone suffers.
The key is that you need to break free from that box and show people that nobody is doing exactly what you do quite like how you do it. Don't look like or say the same old, same old — people have gotten bored with that. Be willing to take calculated, strategic risks that clearly illustrate how different you are from your competitors and why that couldn't matter more.
The Art of the Upsell
Another way to ramp up your business quickly has less to do with amassing a steady stream of new customers and is more about extracting more value out of the ones you already have.
Upselling is exactly what it sounds like — an opportunity to take someone who has already made a purchase and get them to either upgrade to a slightly more expensive one, or to get them to purchase additional features and accessories that might help them get the most out of their experience with your brand.
Resist the urge to think about this through the point of view of the sleazy car salesman — upselling is something to be celebrated, as it creates a mutually beneficial situation for everyone. By migrating current clients to a better version of your product, they get the same benefits they've come to know and love and a few new ones on top of it all. You're genuinely improving their lives and making their own jobs easier in a meaningful way — that is always something to be appreciated. Plus, you get to increase your customer lifetime value — so again, everyone wins when you're upselling from an earnest, real and beneficial place.
Experimenting With Your Prices
Another way to ramp up your business involves experimenting with your prices — something that you can do in a few different ways depending on the circumstances.
First, you could always try increasing your prices. There's a caveat to this, of course. Don't do it just for the sake of it — do it because your marketplace is willing to pay more for the level of value that you've proven you can provide. Raising prices haphazardly is a recipe for disaster. Raising them because your market has shown you that they're willing to pay if you continue to deliver on your quality and value propositions can again create a mutually beneficial situation for everyone.
Likewise, you could always experiment with new revenue models like developing a monthly recurring subscription instead of one flat fee and upselling later on. In this case, you get a fixed, predictable monthly revenue stream that you can depend on based on the volume of customers you have, and those customers get the confidence that comes with knowing they're always getting the best version of your product.
Bringing Your Sales and Marketing Teams Together
You should also work hard to make sure that your sales and marketing teams are not separated from one another. They each play important roles in the customer journey, just at two very different parts. They need to be able to not only create and share data with one another, but collaborate on customer relationship management. Your marketing is how you create new leads — your sales efforts are how you convert those leads into paying customers.
Because of that, make sure that you're not thinking of these as two separate arms of your business at all. They are and should always be two sides of the exact same coin.
Optimize That Funnel
Finally, make sure you're not only creating the best sales funnel for your audience, but you're also optimizing and automating that funnel too.
Generally speaking, if you want someone to make a purchase, you need to go out of your way to make it as easy as possible for them to do so. Your sales funnels are how you do that, creating the most pleasurable journey possible from "I'm interested in learning more" to "I can't wait to give you my money."
Make the most out of CRM solutions and other technological techniques to automate whatever you can. This will free up your actual, human marketing and sales employees to spend more time on those tasks that require an intimate, emotional and decidedly human touch.
Martinez & Shanken, PLLC writes for CountingWorks, an accounting news and advice website. Reach the firm at [email protected]
About Martinez & Shanken, PLLC
Martinez & Shanken, PLLC is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) firm based in Gilbert, Arizona. We provide a full range of accounting, bookkeeping, consulting, outsourcing and business services. Partners Deborah Martinez and Earl Shanken work to ensure your business accounting is done with integrity and to your satisfaction.
