For small business owners who don't want to stay small

You need to aim for $3m in revenue (in your business) to make your first million dollars. Overhead, payroll, taxes, and other business expenses are going to eat into 2/3rds of the money you generate. This is something I have had to come to terms with while studying businesses that successfully scaled from being small. These 25 revenue expanders (as I like to call them) are chosen for their simplicity. They are little tweaks that can deliver huge results.

Due to the recent events in the global economy, the walls seem to be closing in on the small business owner. The middle class is shrinking and many are going to fall into poverty if they don’t get help. So I have been thinking, “how can I give the small business owner an edge and unfair advantage?”

Well, this is my answer. I will share the first 7 of the 25 revenue expanders with you. If any of these trigger thoughts of possibilities in your mind, buy this product.

1. Double the time of pipeline nurture

If your sales pipeline is 7 days for a new prospect, double it to 14. If you are doing 5 days, double it to 10. This is because people are psychological beings.

Many people think they can persuade people to buy. And that is wrong. You cannot judge when your prospect will be ready to buy. But you can increase your range of availability.

When the prospect is ready to do business or buy, will your offer be staring right in front of them? Many businesses give up before people are ready to buy and so they lose sales.

Your job here is not to be the best offer. Just be present when people are ready to buy or do business with you. The longer your pipeline is, the higher the probability that you be right in your prospect’s face when they are ready to buy.

2. Segment your customer list

One of the big mistakes of small business owners is that they group all customers together. They send the same offers to all customers. They just lump everybody together into one place.

Imagine if Netflix assumes all their customers to be the same and shows them the same set of movies. Imagine if YouTube offers you the same set of videos on your homepage with your spouse or your kids. You can see where this is going.

Everybody isn’t the same. Every customer isn’t the same. Yes, every person has their unique preferences, but there are a few things common to certain people. In your business, you should unite or categorize together people who have the same or similar interests. And there is a reason.

This is so that you can send them offers that align with their interests. With that, you will not be at risk of spamming people or a lot of people unsubscribing.

When you segment your customer list, you can send more offers. If you send more offers, you will make more sales. If you make more sales, your revenue will shoot up.

3. Offer free services/products to inactive clients

This is very powerful. If this is just one thing you take from here and apply to your business, you will be wowed at the result.

It is way easier to reactivate an old client than to try to win a new one. They already have the experience. They know what they stand to get. If your product or service has been awesome, of course, they would love to jump back in.

But most small businesses don’t ask. They go out to start chasing new leads. Yes, chase new leads if you must. But try reactivating inactive clients that you had a good working relationship with. Send them a free offer. Send them something that would not be opposed to.

This can make you money in a matter of days or even minutes.

4. Have a dedicated staff for customer satisfaction

You are going to do your best sales from customer satisfaction. According to Jay Abraham, there are 3 ways to increase revenue in a business. You either increase price, increase products, or make existing customers buy more frequently.

Guess which one is easiest? Most small businesses don’t act like it even if they know it. It is easier for existing customers to buy more frequently. The question then becomes — how can you ensure this?

Well, the answer is simple. Hire the right person for customer satisfaction. Yes, the job of customer satisfaction is to make sure that the customer is satisfied. But it is also a sales position. Smart businesses sell from customer satisfaction.

This is not done in a sleazy way. This is done neatly often with education-based marketing. The moment customer satisfaction is trusted to give informed perspectives, customers will keep coming back for more.

5. Run weekly promotions

This is easy to do and also easy to neglect. This is important, especially for e-commerce businesses. You must be running promotions as often as possible. And this can be adopted into any industry.

For example, real estate agents do this by showcasing a deal of the week. This is where they showcase a property for sale and the most enticing things about the property. Some even do a deal of the day.

You have to keep offers in the face of your customers or audience. The more offers you make, the more money you make.

6. List swap with a non-compete

This is a good way to get more leads in your business. The number of your leads is very connected to the size of your revenue and business.

If you have a 2% conversion rate and 1,000 people on your list, you have 20 customers. On a list of 10,000 people, the same conversion rate gives you 200 customers.

This is why you should put a good effort into building a good list of potential customers. And the best way to do that is a list swap.

List swap means that you go to someone and introduce yourselves to each other’s audience. You give them an endorsed introduction to your audience and they give you an endorsed introduction to their audience. There will be some people who will flow into your world based on that.

This is better than any kind of advertising and can increase your customer base and revenue in a snap.

7. Double the frequency of your offer

People are psychological beings. People are emotional beings. Sometimes people don’t take your offer because they didn’t see it. We live in a very distracted world. Even if you have the best offer in the world, it can be ignored.

Maybe when your offer came in, your prospect suddenly glanced and saw their toddler about to fall off the sofa. Then, they noticed the toddler has made a mess. After then, they get a series of calls, and instantly they have forgotten about your offer. Life happens.

This is the reason to increase the frequency of your offer. You can do this with a rest of mind if you have your list segmented. You won’t be afraid lots of people won’t be pissed off that you are sending too much.

The average person receives hundreds of emails in a day and spends less than 1 second on an ad in their social media feed. So, if you want to be seen, you have to make the effort to be seen.

Increase your frequency. It doesn’t seem logical but it is psychological. And always remember that people are psychological beings.

Conclusion

Put at least one of these to work in your business and watch the impact it will make on your revenue.

There are 18 more simple tweaks like these. And personally, my favorite is number 14.