23 PROFIT INCREASING STRATEGIES
INCREASE SALES
Getting more sales leads of the type you want
Becoming more compellingly attractive to prospects
Improving your marketing systems
Improving your referral systems
Converting more of your sales leads into customers
Improving your sales systems
Improving your follow-up systems
Increasing loyalty so that they stay as customers for longer – and your customer defection rate is lower
Improving your customer service systems
Becoming more valuable to your customers – so that it is harder for them to do without you and harder for a competitor to provide the same input
Increasing the average number of times your customers do business with you in a year – ie how many times they buy from you
Providing products/services that meet more of your customers’ needs
Improving your systems for encouraging, rewarding and enabling more frequent purchases by customers
Increasing the average amount customers spend every time they do business with you – ie how much they buy from you
Improving your pricing systems
Improving the “quality” of your customers
Improving your up-selling systems so they buy more expensive options
Improving your cross-selling systems so they buy extra items
Understanding your true product costs so you can systematically drive up sales of the more profitable items in your sales mix
REDUCE COSTS
Improving productivity and efficiency so that you need fewer inputs (ie labour, materials, services etc) to support each £ of turnover
Improving your operational systems, procedures and work practices
Improving your technology
Improving the knowledge, skills and attitude of your team
Getting rid of customers who set you back
Reducing the price paid for inputs
Switching suppliers to get cheaper prices
Negotiating lower prices with existing suppliers
Managing your balance sheet better
Changing how and when you extend credit to customers – and who to
Improving the way you collect from debtors
Re-arranging and/or renegotiating borrowings and interest rates
