Growing revenue is one of the top priorities of almost every company. It consumes a significant portion of top management’s attention and 
companies often go to great lengths to create new markets, win new customers, open up new distribution channels, and more. Large investments are made in marketing, PR, sales calls, going to trade shows and a host of other activities all in the name of growing revenues.
While such efforts can be hugely rewarding for companies, but they can also be risky, expensive, and time consuming. And if they don’t pan out they can undermine current profits, especially in the near-term. So finding ways to grow revenue today without a large investment of time or capital is important if not essential.
Recently I have been working with several companies for whom this is a particularly acute need. They need more sales quickly and they don’t have the time or the cash to invest in major initiatives right now.
Four Ways to Grow Revenue Today
1. Deliver every order on-time
This may sound obvious but the reality is that quite often companies struggling to grow sales are not delivering on-time and in full (OTIF) on their current orders. Quite simply this is revenue that is already there for you that you are not getting. If you simply ship every order you already have on-time and in full you will grow revenue today. Cash flow will improve as well since you are getting paid sooner and are reducing the time between paying your expenses and receiving cash for your deliveries.
And in most cases delivering OTIF will get you more orders from your existing customers. You may have to go and ask for it, but if your customer is currently tolerating late deliveries from you it’s probably because he isn’t able to get it from someone else OTIF. So when you start delivering OTIF ask for a greater share of your customer’s business. It’s rare that you will be the only supplier he uses so there’s more business to be had. Keep in mind that most companies can deliver a small increase in volume (5-10%) without having to add people or equipment, so the only real cost of small increases is likely to be the raw materials you have to buy. That means the majority of these additional revenues fall straight to your bottom line.
2. Go the extra mile on bids
I don’t know how many times I have heard companies in need of sales tell me they don’t win enough of their bids, and then learned that they do little more than to send off their quotes and wait. If you’re losing 50% or more of the quotes you put out, you have a huge opportunity right in front of you to grow revenue today. Get aggressive, and I don’t mean with the price.
First of all turn your quotes around immediately. If your customer gets a quote that looks reasonable for something he needs, it’s quite likely he’ll take it. So be first, get your quote back right away and give your customer the opportunity to say “yes” to it. But don’t stop there, get on the phone. Yes that thing you talk to other humans with, not the email or the text function, the phone. Call a couple of hours after you send your quote and ask for the business. Talk to your customer, understand what expectations and needs he has, how your price looks to him. Very often you will either get the business on the spot or you will hear what you need to do to win the bid. Then you can modify your quote, delivery timeline, or payment terms right there and grab the business before someone else does. Getting aggressive also signals to your customers that you want their business, that you care about meeting their needs. In an impersonal world of emails and texts this is both refreshing and powerful. And besides its much harder for someone to say “no” to you over the phone than it is by email. So get aggressive, if nothing else you will learn where you stand and what it takes to win more business from that client.
3. Identify and target your sweet spots
Most everyone uses some form of product costing to determine prices and evaluate the desirability of different products and types of work. I won’t go into the flaws of this approach here except to say that most companies know the characteristics of the work that is most profitable for them. It might be that you do better with higher volumes and longer runs, or product that requires a certain type of finishing, or work that requires a significant amount of engineering work, or any number of other factors. It might also be that you currently have underutilized capacity in some of area of your business and can handle more orders readily. Whatever it is, identify those sweet spots in your business where you excel and target the opportunities you are already getting more aggressively.
If you have underutilized capacity for a given type of product or work, you can probably deliver faster or at a lower cost than the competition, so identify those opportunities and pay extra attention to them. Offer something more, price to win, or simply connect with your customer to figure out what you need to do to win that job, and more of them in the future. Within your existing opportunities there are most certainly some things that you have an edge on, so use it to capture those sales and grow revenue today.
4. Zero in on niches
Within your market there will always be smaller niches of customers who value what you offer in a certain way. Identifying and targeting a couple sub-sets of your larger market with a focused effort, a specific message or service offering is a fast and effective way to grow your sales. Remember you already have a base level of business, so targeting a niche or two will only add to your sales, and it doesn’t require a large effort, a lot of risk or significant investment.
Identify companies in these niches that you don’t currently sell to or don’t have a lot of business with and go after them. Use your experience with existing customers in that niche to bring more business your way. Unless you are the dominant global leader in your industry there is opportunity right at your doorstep right now. So pick some niches you already serve and expand within them. You already understand their needs, have a product or service that works for them and have experience in servicing them. Exploit that before you go off chasing something new and you will grow your revenue today.
More often than not one or more of these strategies will help you grow revenue today. It may not be sufficient to achieve your 10 year growth plan but with the profits you earn from exploiting these immediate opportunities you will have generated more money to invest in the future and bought yourself the time to do it.
Do you have another strategy for growing revenue today that has worked for you? If so we’d love to hear about it, so leave a comment below. And if you want more practical, effective strategies to grow your business, check out my new book, Aligned & Engaged: Hidden Keys for Turning Teamwork into Profit.