Success in business is all about revenue building. And revenue building, also known as new business development, it’s often said, is a numbers game.
And as anyone who has built their sales numbers over time will tell you, it’s about playing the revenue building game consistently.
You might be wondering how you can possibly fit anything else, especially if it seems difficult, into your already packed day. We’ll get to that.
First things first though – what defines a revenue-building activity? In short it’s any activity that’s directly related to getting you new business, extending existing business or getting you in front of people with whom you could do business in the future. In other words, filling the new business pipeline, servicing it and converting prospects into paying customers.
Seems obvious, right?
Revenue building problems
There are two problems we business owners, entrepreneurs and partners face (and many employees too for that matter).
- Many of us sabotage our revenue building ability by focusing on busy tasks – like tweaking our websites or doing administrative tasks – that frankly we’d be better served by letting someone else do and focusing on building our businesses.
- We start hunting new business, win some clients and then stop hunting until that job finishes and we need more business – and that can cause cash flow issues due to the peaks and troughs in income.
Your key to ultimate revenue building success is consistently focusing on the activities that are ‘directly related’ to bringing in revenue. And that means dealing with, wooing and selling to, providing for and nurturing your customers. Or if you’ve got a customer problem, fixing their problem. Then rinsing and repeating.
The myth of having a website that customers will flock to and order from, where you might only ever have to deal with them via email (on the odd occasion) – is exactly that, a myth. And doubly so if you’re a service provider such as an accountant, financial planner, podiatrist, electrician, real estate agent, graphic designer, etc.
People (i.e.: your customers and prospects) do business with people they know, like and trust. And your job as your business’ revenue generator is to build that ‘know, like and trust’ as well as you can, as fast as you can, keeping in mind that all relationships take time. Not only that, but once you’ve built that relationship, you have to nurture it forever.
The truth is, there will always be someone out there prepared to get out there into customer-land to woo, win and nurture your customers and prospects.
The big question is, are you going to let them?
If you’re answer is no, how are you going to stop them?
How much time do you spend on revenue building?
Ask yourself how much time you really spend on building your business revenue. If the answer is “I don’t know”, “I’m not sure”, “not enough” or “not enough to hit my targets this year”, then you need to address it.
If wondering how you’re going to fit another thing into your already packed schedule. That’s easy – by planning and scheduling.
If you’re going to approach things differently this year and focus on revenue building, you’ll need to dedicate regular time (i.e.: schedule it in your diary) for revenue building activities. If you’re new to this or it’s just you in your business, you might focus on this just one day a week – start with just 1 hour a week and see how it goes. If after a month or two, it’s not enough, increase it to a second day.
If, however, you’ve got a mega year planned with massive goals, you might try one hour each and every morning.
As an example, we know a very successful business owner, with millions in revenue each year, in the financial sector and every morning he does his ’10 at 10’ – 10 new business calls from 10-11am EVERY day, without fail. That then leaves the rest of his day to deal with the resulting work, proposals, meetings, staff, issues, admin, thinking, etc. He didn’t start out with millions in revenue, he built it from scratch, 10 calls at a time.
Try these revenue building ideas
After ideas for what you can do and a quick way to get started? You might like to try One Small Thing in Business – the new revenue building game which assigns you one of 52 revenue building activities.
And if you’re really serious about growing your business, or looking for the guidance of a seasoned professional, you might also like to consider a business mentoring program. You can always give us a call on (02) 9994 8005 or drop us a note.
