The Unexpected Way to Increase your Revenue Fast!

Every business owner I know wants to increase their revenue or sales each year. That’s generally understood as a simple metric for measuring success year over year. Now it obviously doesn’t take into account expenses and other factors to calculate actual profitability, but lots of times when we first start our business, we are all about sell, sell, sell. We want to sell as much as possible as often as possible to as many people as possible. Right? But what about the velocity or speed of those sales? What we can learn as we run our business longer is that there's a really roundabout way of increasing our revenue even faster than just making the most sales. And the key in doing that is understanding your sales and what they really mean.

That's one of the reasons that I love about working with my clients. We can really dig into the data when we have high-quality accounting records and timely financial statements. We can get into truly understanding the why about their revenue and answer questions like “What are the offerings that have the best profit?” or “Who are the clients that buy the most repeat business?” These elements are even more important than just making sale after sale.

These couple of insights are really the best way to increase your revenue faster and ultimately help your bottom line. The key is understanding how you can sell more of the most profitable item, and how you can sell more things to people who already have chosen to buy from you. It's much easier to sell something to somebody who's already worked with you since they already know, like, and trust you. And the root of that information is found in your financial statements. When we have a high level of detail, when we're accounting for what each customer buys from you, we can go back and re-target or re-sell and earn repeat business. When we have accurate and timely recordings of how profitable different elements of our business are, we can target the most profitable ones thus working smarter, not harder.

Let me give you an example. I spoke with a gentleman who was doing big landscaping installations and designs such as hardscapes and pools. And he said that the last couple of years have been the most impactful years or the highest sales of his entire 30 years in business. Incredible, right? Wow, he had amazing sales. Except they were the least profitable years that he's ever been in business, because his financial statements weren't being kept accurately or up-to-date. He wasn't in-tune to the fact that for those hardscapes he was paying significantly higher labor rates than what he had been bidding his jobs. And he was having a harder time getting a hold of some supplies and they were higher in cost due to the supply chain shortage. So, his margin and profit were actually lower, even though his sales were so much higher than they'd ever been before.

But when he was able to finally break out those numbers and look at the data, he realized that the smaller jobs were actually more profitable to his business. It was the small installations, like planting designs and minor landscaping, that was incredibly profitable and since he had a great team already in place, he could get those jobs executed really quickly. He didn't have any issues of taking a big deposit, spending it all, and waiting for materials. He could just get it done, get that final payment, and have the most profitable job done in the half the time. So that was a very unexpected way to increase his revenue really fast. It’s also a good reminder to go back and call all those people that you've worked with in the past, and see if they're thinking about doing something more or if you can help them with another need or project.

So hopefully this helps you as you think about what the next steps should be for your business and also helps you understand what a tool your financial records are for helping you make sound business decisions. If you are not sure if you can even glean some of this great information from your own financial records, don't hesitate to reach out and we could brainstorm about ways to improve your processes and provide this insight so you can get the best results out of your business.