Where do your sales come from?

How many sales channels do you use to generate that new business?

1,2, 3? As a Business mentor in Kent I always maintain it should be 5. Sound like a lot?  It depends on how they work for your Business.

Your best channels will be the first 1 or 2, what are yours? Email marketing, Google p.p.c., Exhibitions, referrals, distributors the list goes on and on. It’s the importance around these channels that I want to focus on as these are your drivers. These will be the consistent go to places which deliver you a nice steady stream of new business.

Complacency has always been a dangerous game in Business.

Just when you think everything is going well it comes back to bite you. Your channels to market not only need constant monitoring, they may need changing completely based on the data. What may well have been a number 1 is now number 4. You know this because you have been measuring your conversion rate from each channel based on the amount of time and money put into each.

Before becoming a Business mentor this is how things changed for me and the strategy I used to cope. Several years back one of my niche businesses started experimenting with Google pay per click. It was an ideal channel for the product and produced some very good results for us. As time went on though we noticed our competitors were slowly eating into our share and the prices to advertise were increasing with that competition. Our return on investment was getting to a point where we were questioning the spend.  The Google search engine was now critical to the growth of this product range.

We upped our spend on Search engine optimization instead. It took a few months to get us back at the top of google (just under the p.p.c. ads). The enquiries started picking up nicely and we weren’t paying anywhere near as much to be at the top of page one.

This analogy applies to all your channels.

In much the same way you study your management accounts and profit and loss each month (you do, don’t you?). It’s a simple case of keeping an eye on your marketing and tracking the performance for continual improvement. At the same time not being blinkered about exploring a new channel.

Those sales channels are the bedrock for the Businesses future. Have you been constantly working on yours? It is so easy to get distracted on other things within the Business. But if you aren’t looking after the future of your Business who else is? It's an area where lots of owner managed businesses need help with. Have you ever considered the difference a business mentor would make to you and your business?

Why don’t you try one of my complimentary mentoring sessions and see how I can help your business, today. It’s easy just drop me an email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Mark Roblett
Director & Business Mentor
North Kent & South East London

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