Most entrepreneurs and small-business owners are constantly looking for ways to grow their business. They usually only look in one of two places, sales or marketing. However, there is a third option, and it might be what you are looking for in order to double your business next year.
The Marketing Approach
When business owners have a marketing mind-set, they try to talk to twice as many people to double their business. For example, if you had 100 leads last year and they turned into 10 customers, in order to double your business this year, you would need 200 leads.
There are three problems with this approach. You generally have to spend twice as much money to attract those leads through marketing. You have to spend twice as much time dealing with the leads. And you usually have to offer twice the value of your regular offering to get that many leads. You usually offer a coupon, discount or 2-for-1 deal to get more people to take action.
Most business owners don’t really want to spend twice the money and twice the time to get half of the profit, so the marketing approach usually doesn’t work.
The Sales Approach
Many people think a sales mind-set is a better way to go, and they try to close twice as many deals out of the same number of leads. You take the same 100 leads, only this time you try to close 20, instead of just 10.
This leads to a lot problems as well. You and your sales team end up pushing twice as hard. You have to do twice the follow-up to make sure no one slips through the cracks. And most salespeople end up getting twice as creative. Which means, you start creating products to sell that are outside your normal offering, get creative about whom you’re selling to, or start reaching for sales you probably shouldn’t.
Most salespeople don’t want to push and chase bad prospects, and most business owners don’t want bad clients and creative deals that challenge their ability to deliver, so the sales approach usually doesn’t work either.
The Business Development Approach
A business development mind-set optimizes your sales and marketing to eliminate waste and maximize the opportunities. Imagine: You talk to only 50 leads, but you get the 20 sales and you double your revenue from each sale.
What would have to happen to make that possible? You would be talking to fewer, but better prospects, and having the best conversations possible with those leads. First, make sure they have a problem you can solve, an adequate budget and the decision-making ability before you spend a dime in marketing or time in sales.
Second, you will have to develop trust, accurately qualify the opportunity and truly differentiate yourself from the competition. If you pull it off, you could actually spend less time, money and energy, have your number of leads go down, but your number of sales and profits go up.
In order to optimize your business development process to double your sales, but not your workload, you have to look for the right leads and the right sales.
If you can do that, you just might find yourself with more profit and more fun next year!
