Feel the Force

Hopefully you've given some thought to the three questions I asked on yesterday’s blog? Remember there are only three ways to grow your business, and provided you focus on each one with purpose and with persistence, you will see significant growth.

As an example let’s have a look at a fictional Beauty Salon. It’s well run, well established, and the owners regularly focus on those three key growth drivers (must have a good accountant!)  They know that currently they have 1000 clients spending an average of £25 each visit and making 6 visits each year.

1000 clients x £25 spend x 6 visits = £150,000 income per year

What if they could find a way to increase those three key numbers by just 10%? That’s not a massive increase but let’s look at the effect on their income.

1100 clients x £27.50 spend x 6.6 visits = £199,650 income per year

That’s a 33.1% increase in overall income, from a mere 10% increase in those three key areas. Imagine if you could do that year on year, what kind of success could your business achieve in the next 5 years?

So let’s look at each of those three key growth drivers in more detail, but before we do, let me ask you this. Do you think of the people who buy from you as Clients or as Customers?

To contrast the two terms, here at BW, in keeping with, I imagine, every other firm of  accountants in the world, we have Clients. What that means to us is that we have a duty of care, to be a trusted advisor to our clients, and to protect and look after their best interests. Based on those principals we can build a long lasting and mutually rewarding relationship

Compare that with for example your average mid-sized outlet in the Trafford Centre. Their sales staff will generally be more focused on the product than the purchaser, and will view the transaction as a one off. In other words they have Customers.

But isn’t it interesting how the large multiples, your Tesco’s, Sainsbury’s and the likes, are now bending over backwards to look after us all?. Loyalty cards bring us back to the store time and time again, but they also give the company valuable information about our buying habits and our preferences.  They’re even trying to get us to eat our veg, for goodness sake, presumably so we’ll all be around longer to continue that “mutually rewarding relationship”!

So, many of the biggest and most successful retailers in the country are looking at us differently now. They may still call us their Customers, but aren’t we actually their Clients? And is that perhaps something you can take on board in your business?