Karl Craig-West

YOU DON'T HAVE TO PERFORM MIRACLES TO GET GREAT SALES GROWTH

Many business owners feel that they should constantly be spending all of their time looking for new customers. However, I have found it to be a very difficult and inefficient way of growing business sales. It's far too easy to overlook the value in your current client or customer list.

Let’s use the example where a small business has 200 clients each spending an average 250 pounds per order and ordering an average twice a year. If you do in the maths you would work out that this company turns over 100,000 pounds per year.

200 x 250 x 2 = 100,000

Now if they were to grow their customer base by only 10 percent naturally the number of customers would go up to 220. So if you were to do the maths with 220 customers the turnover would increase to 110,000 pounds.

220 x 250 x 2 = 110,000

So what I hear you say. Well let’s just imagine that this business increased its average order amount and the frequency of orders by 10 percent as well. This would give you 220 clients spending an average of 275 pounds ordering 2.2 times a year. Multiply all of that up and the sales would go up to 133,100 pounds per year. A whopping 33.1% increase in sales.

220 x 275 x 2.2 = 133,100

I'm sure we'd all agree that the numbers look pretty but there is an interesting point in this scenario. Two out of the three growth areas are working with existing clients to increase their spend and also increase how often they spend. In other words, instead of spending all of your time trying to get new customers I would urge you to spend more of your time (up to 66 percent) working with your existing clients to find out ways to get them to spend more and to spend more frequently.

Remember, it's around 9 times easier to sell to somebody who already does business with you, than to get a single new client.