Your business is either growing or dying. Each time you increase sales, your growing, and when sales decrease, the process of business decay accelerates. Put another way; it doesn’t matter how much profit you earn on zero sales. The people who buy from you validate your business existence. Your ability to get people to buy from you at a profit validates your business management skills.
If your business is experiencing year-over-year decreases in sales, you have a problem. Whether you plan on selling your business in three years or work it for thirty more years, you need to apply the 7-P Framework to how you must structure your business model to grow sales at a profit.
Overview
Growing sales profitability is one of the hardest things to do in business. You grow sales by going after more new customers, get more money from existing customers, win back lost customers, or by doing some combination of the three.
No matter what terms you use to describe how you plan to grow your sales, they will fall into one of the following three growth strategies:
- Consumer attention is about attracting more new customers.
- Customer maximization comes down to getting more money from existing customers.
- Win back involves persuading lost customers to come back and buy.
Improve your ability to grow your sales by knowing which of the three fundamental customer growth strategies best fits with your business model and the type of customers it attracts.
When everyone involved in executing your sales growth plan is clear about which fundamental strategy you are trying to execute, you will improve your probabilities of success in growing your business. Below is a breakdown of the three fundamental growth strategies, from surest to riskiest in execution.