When it comes to growing the top line revenue of your business what comes to mind? Funnels. Social Media. Video Marketing. SEO. Email Marketing. News Jacking…The list goes on!
With our easy access to information online, it’s easy to become jaded and confused with what you need to do if you want to grow your sales.
But what if there was a way to make this simple? What if there was an easy, measurable way to grow your revenue by over 30%, without the need to make massive shifts? And what if you could get a step by step action plan to make this happen?
Well the good news, is that is exactly what you are about to get!’
You see, when it comes to growing the topline sales of a business there are only three main levers that you can pull to make changes. There are only three categories of things that you need to think about, and plan for, to grow your business by 33%.
Everything else, all the other buzzwords and strategies fall within one of these three categories, and once you see them categorized, everything will become so much clearer.
But first, Lets define what these three levers will change.
Top Line Vs Bottom Line
A lot of business owners mix up the difference between increasing topline sales, with optimizing bottom line profits. Which is more important? Both!
You see, cutting costs to increase the total profits of the business is a wonderful way to maximise your free cash each month, however if the total turnover you are optimizing is small, then you’ll still be left with a small profit.
On the flipside, if you just optimize for top end sales, while neglecting your costs, you can quickly run your business out of business.
While both are critical, in this blog we’re specifically talking about’ increasing the top line sales.
The Three Levers
As I alluded to earlier, there are only three levers that you can pull to grow the topline sales of your business. These are:
- Number of New Clients – This is, the number of new customers or sales that your business makes in any given month.
- Average Order Volume – This is the average dollar value of a sale within your business.
- Number of Repeat Customers – This is the number of times, on average a customer will buy from you.
Everything else, all the marketing tactics, software programs and buzzwords all fall within these three categories.
And as you’ll see, by focussing on these three categories in a strategic way, you can rapidly grow your sales.
The 10-10-10 Plan
Let me ask you a question, what is easier – Getting a 30% growth in new customer sales, OR, a 10% growth? The answer is simple, 10%
So why is it that most business owners focus on growing by 30%? Its all because they don’t understand the power of the 10-10-10 plan.
The idea behind this plan is to grow each of your three levers by only 10%, and by doing so, your total sales by 33%!
Hang on, why 33% not 30%? Lets run the numbers on how things look before we optimize them by 10%/
| Initial | Monthly Total | Notes | |
| Number Of Customers | 100 | 100 | Number of new customers |
| Average Order Value | 100 | $10,000.00 | New customers X Average Value |
| Number Of Repeat Buys | 5 | $50,000.00 | Total Revenue X Average Rebuys |
Now, lets increase each of these area’s by 10%. That is, increase the number of new customers from 100, to 110. The average order value from $100 to $110. And the number of repeat purchases a customer makes from 5, to 5.5. Here is how that plays out’
| Initial | Increase by 10% | Monthly Total | Monthly Growth | Notes | |
| Number Of Customers | 100 | 110 | 110 | 10% | Number of new customers |
| Average Order Value | 100 | 110 | $12,100.00 | 21% | New customers X Average Value |
| Number Of Repeat Buys | 5 | 5.5 | $66,550.00 | 33% | Total Revenue X Average Rebuys |
Just a few minor tweaks, and BOOM, you’ve got an extra 33% on your top line!
And the best part, its quite easy to do, so now, lets explore how to get a 10% boost in each of these areas.
Lever #1: Number of new sales/customers
The first lever that you need to pull is to increase the number of new sales or customers that you get into your business.
Within this, there are two sub-sections:
Subsection 1: More traffic to your website – This is where our services such as SEO, Google Adwords and paid social ads all come into play. They are fantastic ways to get more people to your website. With all things remaining equal, 10% more visitors will lead to 10% more sales.
Subsection 2: Convert more traffic into leads – This involves ensuring that more of the people that hit your website contact you. Things like clearly defining your X-Factor, strategic web-design, and heaps of social proof & testimonials all help here.
Subsection 3: Convert more leads into sales – This is where sales training, follow-up and the right offer all help to get more leads to convert into sales.
The first of these subsections is the easiest to handle if you are a busy business owner, as you can simply hire a firm like our agency to do this for you. The other two require you sitting down and building out new internal systems. Ideally, if you want to reach high, you’d aim to increase all three of these by 10%
Lever #2: Average Sale Price
When people think if increasing average sale price, they automatically think they need to increase the prices. In some cases this is very easily done, in others its not possible.
If you have a strong brand, you can test raising your prices by 10% and seeing how it effects your closing ratio.
From experience, we’ve found that the best way to achieve this is by offering multiple levels of service, as well as cross selling to other services.
For example, if you are an electrician, and you are called out to site to install a ceiling fan, you could easily offer a massively discounted rate on installing new power points, or an energy usage check.
If you are a eCommerce store, perhaps try a bundle deal with complimentary products.
By offering more products, better deals, and complimentary items, not only will you increase your average sale price, you’ll also provide more value to your customers so they are more likely to come back again and again.
Lever #3: Repurchase Rate
How often do your customers come back and buy again?
This question is different for every business and business model, however here are some tips and things to think about:
- Can you get your clients onto a retainer? If they already are, how do you service their needs better so they stay with you for longer?
- If you sell a ‘once off’ item, such as wedding photography, what other products or services can you offer? Could you capture other life milestones exclusively for those you used you as their wedding photographer.
- When was the last time you reached out to your previous customers and asked if they needed anything else?
- Do you do any email marketing to stay in touch with your past customers & to update them with offers?
- If you offer a seasonal or annual product such as car servicing, consider a calling service to call and remind them that their service is due and ask if they’d like it booked in.
Nearly every business can boost their repurchase rate by 10% simply by asking.
Conclusion:
So there you have it, the most simple, effective and easy to implement plan to boost your businesses sales by 33% over the next 12-months. Heck, if you were to be aggressive and implement systems quickly, I’ve seen this happen inside one month!
