4 Simple & Effective Ways to Increase Your Business Revenues 

As a business owner, the constant though whirling around your head is revenue and you know it is no small task. Often my clients try to tack it head on, waste time, money and end up being more frustrated. They put everything into growing a pipeline, to create new collateral, to drive leads, to increase upselling, to train the team, to improve close dates, to add new logos and more. In a world of distraction and disruption, we are obsessed with finding the next big “thing” that will take our organisation to the next level and will drive revenues.

Here’s the deal, growing the sales team, adding new logos, increasing top of the funnel activity, leveraging inside sales, new marketing campaigns, etc can add to an increase in sales revenue, but they aren’t the sure fire way to get you over the top. The key to increasing revenue and building your organisation is aligning 4 critical areas; strategy, structure, A team and systems.  Building simple, specific, measurable objectives and tactics across all four of these areas to accelerate business growth

Your Business Strategy  

It all starts with a clear, powerful sales strategy. What’s your 2017 sales strategy? How are you going to market?  How are you going to get the edge on your competitors? What market opportunities or weaknesses are you going to exploit? What competitors are you going to take out? What new markets are you going to penetrate? What industry changes are you going to leverage, etc?  Starting with a killer strategy is key. Having the wrong strategy or worse yet no strategy can be devastating.

Before you look to do anything, make sure you have a clear sales strategy that aligns with your revenue goals. It’s extremely difficult to grow revenue without a strategy, yes there are a lot of initiatives that can move the needle, but a clear, well thought out strategy is at the core to increasing revenue. Take the time to evaluate your surrounding?  Where do you see areas to exploit? What opportunities are presenting themselves? Where are there latent revenue generating windows? Where is the competition failing? What is the current customer base doing? What market dynamics have changed? Look deep, inside and outside of the company for opportunities to build a killer strategy — it’s key to growing revenue.

Your Business  Structure

Your business structure is the framework that holds up strategy. It’s the core to executing on strategy. Structure makes sure you have the right pieces in place. Without a solid, structure your strategy is dead in the water. The key is to make sure your structure supports your strategic efforts. Does your strategy require inside or outside sales? Does it require hunters or farmers. Does it require content and new web support? Does it require alternative compensation plans? Does it require new territories? What does your strategy require to be successful?  Your structure needs to answer those questions and make sure the answer delivers for the strategy. Your structure includes sales operations and sales enablement as well. It’s all the things that enable your strategy to take flight.

Your A Team

Your A Team, your people: the most important aspect of driving revenue and often the most forgotten. This is the biggest problem most organisations face. If you don’t have the right people in the right roles nothing gets done. People are the core to execution. Making sure you have the right people in the right roles is critical. If the people part isn’t correct, nothing else matters.

Take a look at your team. Do they know your vision and strategy? Do you have the right people in the right roles? Does the team have the right skill sets. Do they have the necessary knowledge? Is the team performing at the level required to be successful?  Can you prove your conclusions? Do you have the data? Can measure the strength of your team in relationship to your strategies. Do you even know what skill sets are required to be successful in each of the roles in your organisation? Have you catalogued the key traits and skills required by your team to crush it? Have you measured each and every member on the team against these skills and traits? Do you have a communication structure to maximise your leadership?

The people part is the most important AND the most difficult to get right. People are unpredictable. Making sure you have the people part right is at the heart of increasing revenue. Make sure your plan has a people element that makes sure you have the right people in the right roles, that they align with the strategy and are motivated and to get things done.

Your Business Systems

To make sure everything is running smoothly, to ensure velocity and efficiency and to avoid wasting time and effort killer processes have to be in place. Bad systems are like throwing a monkey wrench into the gears. Poor processes and systems can impede time to market and execution and slow things down. When systems aren’t working correctly or they don’t exist, the ability to achieve the goals is severely hampered.

Take a good look at your systems. Do they enhance the selling process or hurt it? What does your sales process look like? Does it accelerate the sale? Have you updated your customer mapping? Does it include the customer’s buying process? What is your team development process? What about you pipeline meeting process, your coaching process, lead development process, your win/loss assessment process, your on boarding process, your hiring process, etc. Do you have the right processes in place to ensure that you can deliver?

Implementing simple, functional, effective systems is like supercharging your car. It makes everything go BOOM!  Take a look at all your systems and make sure they improve your company’s ability to sell. Make sure they align with the strategy and structure as well as empower the people. Some business owners find it dull but I love it.

A Targeted, Precise, Aligned Set of Objectives Across  Four Areas

Growing revenue is more than just a handful of efforts, but rather a targeted, precise, aligned set of objectives across these four areas. If your business isn’t delivering you will find the problem in one of these areas; the strategy isn’t sound, the structure doesn’t support the strategy, the wrong people are in the wrong roles or the right systems aren’t in place. When all or any of these four are out of whack, then driving revenue is almost impossible and you can kiss growing revenue goodbye.