October 2010

Time2Budget

Most every one of my clients is in the budget preparation and planning stage…it is the season after all! Many of you are coming out of some tough times and all the expenses that can realistically be cut have been. To best make these cash flow numbers work for everyone you simply must take another look at the revenue side. It’s always “fun” to project big growth, but being practical means figuring out how the revenue will grow in 2011.

Plan4Growth

Can I be direct?

There are only two ways to grow revenue – increase your Drawing Power or increase your Selling Power. Building your Drawing Power means you’ll need to attract new customers. If you want to pull in new people you’ll need to plan for more advertising, outreach, marketing, public relations or hope for a somewhat random uptick in sales.

You can also make more money by selling more products and services to your current clients, patients or customers. This is called Selling Power. If you want to sell more things to your current customers you’ll need to plan for more training, marketing, education or perhaps some new products or services. There are no shortcuts.

The point is – none of this happens accidentally.

Pretending you’ll magically see a 20% sales increase doesn’t do anyone any favors…especially in these hyper-competitive times. Instead, evaluate what new things you’ll need to do in order to make 2011 a revenue success. Take a fresh look at how you spend your advertising budget, how you equip your sales force, how you market or promote your company and how you can take advantage of all the new ideas out there.