Thursday, February 16, 2017

If making great profits was easy, everyone would be doing it

Many owners of small to midsize businesses say 2017 is starting out well from the economic perspective. Still, the need to build and sustain higher profits remains near the top of this year's list of concerns. Wasp Barcode Technologies' new  State of Small Business Report shows that, for businesses with anywhere from five to 100+ employees, building profit remains among the the major key challenges.

To improve the top line, companies can look to several avenues:

-Protecting the base: Improving customer experience and retention

-Cross-selling to the base: Identifying and marketing additional services or products that current customers should be getting from the company

-Growing the base: Identifying, nurturing and capturing "more customers like these" - in other words, finding additional customers similar to the ones that already patronize the company

-Expanding to new types of customers: Employing either or both the "good, better, best" model of selling up and down the quality/price scale, and/or creating new, original offerings that will attract a new breed of customers

-Diversification: Creating a whole new line of business that promises to yield strong returns

Whatever the direction, start with rigorous strategic planning and follow through with intelligent marketing and consistent sales. vSA's ongoing interactions with companies of all sorts point to the importance of rigor and a sharp focus on the realities of business in an ever-more-competitive marketplace. Remember, if making great profits was easy, everyone would be doing it.

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