It is very much a business-specific challenge.
However there is one thing that every single business owner can do.
KNOW THEIR NUMBERS!!
When we say that you should “know your numbers” this goes beyond understanding your turnover (revenue), your costs and your profit margin – it is more about knowing that to achieve a set profit level, how many customers do you need and to get customers, how many prospects do you need to engage with.
For instance, if you know that your average customer spend is £1,000 a year, and your (total) costs are £20,000 per year, you could say that you need 20 customers to break even – this is a crude example.
However not everyone who engages with your product or service will become a customer, so you need to understand the conversion of “prospect” (e.g. someone who engages) to “customer’.”
Therefore if for every 100 prospects you have, only 4 become customers (a 4% conversion) this means £4,000 revenue for every 100 prospects. To get to the £20k you need to “break-even” you need 5 x the 4 customers, meaning 5 x 100 prospects – 500 prospects.
Now if your conversion drops from 4%, you will need more prospects in your sales “funnel” meaning you might need to work harder in marketing, or find a better way to entice prospects to become customers.
At GainMore, we work with clients to understand their true conversion position, as we know that if you focus on knowing and improving on this, the turnover and profits should ultimately look after themselves.