Did You Know There Are Just 4 Ways To Grow Your Business?

It is true. There are 4 fundamental ways to grow your business:

  1. Increase the number of customers (of the type you want);

  2. Increase the transaction frequency;

  3. Increase the transaction value or "average sale";

  4. Increase the effectiveness of each process in your business.

If you're at all skeptical about whether there really are just 4 ways (obviously with multitudes of strategies under each) think of a strategy to grow your business - any strategy - and you'll find it very probably falls under one of these 4 areas.

Conversely, think about a strategy like "cutting costs" - realistically that won't grow your business unless you use the money you save to promote your business. It may let you control your business better and return greater profits, but it won't help you to actually grow your business.

Increase the number of customers (of the type you want)

If you're like most business owners your primary focus will be on the first way to grow your business - winning new customers. You may have often thought "I need more leads," "I've got to get more inquiries," "If I could just get the phone to ring and more people to walk through the door we'd be doing really well," and so you invest heavily in advertising for instance. Often there are other ways to win increased sales that don't cost nearly as much and usually those strategies go untouched.

Increase the transaction frequency

Increasing the "transaction frequency" - or the number of times someone deals with you is an important step to increasing your profitability. In fact, some scholars say this second way is the most important of all. It's a fancy definition of loyalty, or customer retention, which in and of itself is closely related to value.

Increase the transaction value, or "average sale"

This is a "Blinding Flash of the Obvious" or "BFO!" However few businesses realize its importance (in fact, they do the exact opposite).

Increase the effectiveness of each process in your business

The fourth way to grow your business is more of an all-encompassing strategy than the other 3 ways. You see, increasing the effectiveness of the way you do business is central to everything but so few people work at it.

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