Skilled Migrant Professionals February 2015 | Page 26

Business

Y

steps to grow your
business

ou are either growing or dying – there is no standing still. It might be nice if we could grow a business to a certain level
and then sit there, but that’s not how things work. Besides, staying in your comfort zone is, in the end, quite boring.
“Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and
duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.”
Bruce Lee, Martial arts instructor, actor, film director.
by Richard Giannini, Business
So let’s look at 7 steps that are critical in growing any business:
Growth Advisor at Infinity Growth

Step 1: Know who you want as
your customers and then know
what THEY want…
You’ve likely heard this many times before,
but I’m talking about something much deeper here. This is a big secret that few ever really
manage to discover.
You need to find your ‘screaming audience’ you know, like a rock star does. Those customers
that would jump over a table to get what you
have. In order to do that you need to be very
clear on whom you are wanting as customers
and what they truly desire – from THEIR perspective.
For example, you might be a hairdresser and
are targeting single mums and believe they want
a cut and colour. In reality they may want a hairstyle that takes them less than seven minutes
to prepare each morning that will have their
friends saying: “Wow, your hair always looks
awesome!”
This example shows two perspectives; one is
yours and that will almost always revolve around
what you do or how you do it – that is the
language of the business owner. Unfortunately, it’s a different language to your
ideal prospect’s.
Your ideal prospect’s language revolves around ‘how I want to feel’. So
the key here is to think like your prospect and communicate using their
language in your marketing and advertising. Use the words they use in
their head and stop thinking like an
owner. If you do that, you’ll connect
with them and you might just tap into your ‘screaming audience’.

come back than to go out and get a new one.
Whatever the actual numbers are is not important. The fact remains that it’s much easier
to get someone that has experienced and spent
money with you to come back and buy again. A
new customer has a fear of not knowing how
good you’ll be so will not be so ready to part
with their money with an unknown.
Existing clients don’t have these fears. No
matter how much you think you focus on this do it more. For example (we’ll stick with the hairdresser example) you might say: “But I already
have my clients coming back every six weeks for
a haircut.”
I’d challenge you with - how can you get
them to come every five, or even every four
weeks? One way is to book their next appointment before they leave the salon for four weeks’
time. This simple step has proven to work for
countless hair salons I’ve worked with. Not all
of them will do it but enough do that it makes a
significant impact.
Remember – changing the frequency from

Step 2: Focus on getting
past customers to come
back ….
In marketing we have a saying: It’s six
times easier to get a past customer to

26

www.smpmagazine.com.au | February 2015

six weeks to four weeks means a 39% increase
in sales!

Step 3: Know your numbers
There are certain numbers you should always
know in your business. It’s like the dashboard of
a car. You can’t drive a car without knowing (at
least) how much fuel you have left and how fast
you are driving. The same is true with business.
You need to know your driving numbers all the
time. They’ll be different for every business, but
the most common ones are:
• Sales made this month
• Bank account balance today
• Number of leads generated from marketing
and advertising
• Number of sales made from these new leads
(conversion rate)
• Your average profit margin
When you know your numbers, you will find
that just by watching them every day, they will
increase simply because you are focusing on
them.