Many businesses invest significant sums to generate business. The assumption, very often, is that to generate more they need to spend more. To grow sales you have to commit more budget every month to keep filling the sales funnel. Whether you use telemarketing, direct response or affiliates there is a cost behind every lead and a recurring cost to maintain the supply.

But what if there was a way to generate more revenue without spending any more on generating new leads? Is there an alternative to sales growth fuelled by ever-increasing costs of lead generation?  The reality is that many firms miss acting on all the opportunities they have created and leave money on the table as a result. The simplest, quickest and virtually zero cost way to grow revenues is getting better at tracking and managing what you already have.

There’s a simple calculation that every business should do: take your existing sales conversion rate and apply the 5-10% improvement test; what would that mean as a value for increased revenue at no additional investment, if the number of leads remained constant?

Why Are You Losing Potential Sales?

Working out the number you may have just calculated is the easy bit – knowing how to make the changes is where it sometimes falls down. The first goal is to see where (and why) your leads are dropping out. Is it lack of clear information? A confusing product offer? Poor customer handling?  The fact that prospects can never speak to anyone? A badly optimised website? Lack of understanding of what customers really want? Leads not being captured?

In reality, there are many different factors that could be preventing the leads you have invested in generating converting into sales. This process can start with mapping what the sales processes (online and offline) currently look like and how they relate to each other. Potential discontinuities, weak spots, barriers and leakage points can then all be highlighted and targeted for improvement.

The First Step Can be the Hardest (and the Easiest)

There’s a clear logic to all of this. And the improvements you make to the sales conversion process bring enduring profit growth at no additional cost. So why don’t more businesses do it? I think there are two main reasons: time and focus.

In many SME businesses, everyone is busy focusing on delivery – this is often what is immediately in front of them and needs to be completed to get paid. Taking a step back, the start of getting paid is to get an order; and the start of making a profit is getting an order at the right price. This perspective is often crowded out by the day-to-day.

There’s also the issue that taking a step back to consider the efficiency of customer management is not easy, without having a simple mechanism or process to analyse performance and affect change. Many of the planning processes are aimed at big business and are too complex or unaffordable to be relevant. Businesses need an appropriate process for their size and needs, without compromising on their ability to have a positive impact on performance. Trial and error without a plan and effective monitoring could potentially make things worse.

The solution? Work with an organisation that specialises in helping firms achieve the 5-10% improvements in performance that can transform bottom line performance, simply and cost-effectively. If this has got you thinking, contact the Access Performance team to discuss your next step on 01823 429339.