Big Think Revenue Generator™ Advanced Model

There are numerous issues that can act as brakes in the revenue generation process. Here are a few of them:

• Poor branding (logo/visual identity and messaging)
• Not “looking” like a solid company (often related to website, business cards, marketing collateral, and sales materials)
• Ineffective Leadership
  • Not establishing written core values for your company can lead to hiring the “wrong” people – people who do not fit what you want in your company. Core values should be used for hiring, reviewing, rewarding, and terminating employees. Core values should be supported by stories, analogies, examples, history, and what the opposite of the values looks like.
  • Not having a clear vision in writing.
  • Not establishing clear goals for the company and each employee.
  • Not establishing a culture of accountability and performance.
  • Allowing mediocrity and politics.
  • Not fixing people issues decisively.
  • Not having a strong board of directors/board of advisors.
• Disengaged employees
  • 2/3 of employees are disengaged according to The Gallup Organization. This means employees are not as productive as they can be, and a portion of employees are actually working against an organization. Fixing this should be one of the top priorities of leaders.

There are only four ways to increase revenues:

1. Acquire new customers
2. Sell more per transaction
3. Sell more frequently
4. Keep customers longer

The following four accelerators support these revenue growth areas:

• Generate referrals
  • As you deliver value that customers want, they will often provide referrals.
  • You may need to ask for referrals.
  • Referrals result in sales twice as often and twice as fast as a lead.
  • When people are referred to you, they assume that’s the way you do business and are more likely to refer to you.
• Increase customer lifetime
  • The longer you keep a customer, the more opportunities they have to buy from you.
  • It is less expensive to keep a customer than to find a new one.
  • Once a customer has experienced and likes what you offer, they will buy from you more readily, so selling to them again becomes easier.
• Sell more often
  • If you can increase frequency of orders, it helps deliver more revenue in a given period of time.
  • Sometimes this means nurturing the relationship after the sale and helping them realize they need more of what you have right now!
• Sell more each sale
  • Increasing the average transaction size can put more profit on your bottom line because it doesn’t usually cost more for a customer to buy an additional item or two.
  • Companies can often achieve greater average order size by increasing the number or fit of offerings, such as partnering with another company or adding a product line.

There are six additional accelerators in our advanced model, but there are many more as well. The ones in the Advanced Revenue Generator™ Model include:

• Build a Solid Brand
  • Branding is often seen as subjective, but it makes a huge difference in today’s highly visual business environment.
  • Your logo and other materials need to have a cohesive and consistent visual identity that is attractive to your target market.
  • Your messaging should be crisp and powerful, and it should make people ask the questions: “How do you do that?,” and “Tell me more.” If you’re not getting that response when you tell people what you do, you’re either fishing in the wrong stream or your message is off target.
  • Managing your reputation and media mentions is also important to building your brand. One ding on your reputation can cause significant damage to your brand, so make sure that you provide a consistent experience and that issues are resolved rapidly and well.
• Create an Experience
  • People expect to have a great experience these days.
  • Intentionally design an experience for customers that addresses each touch point from when they first learn about you to purchasing, using your offering, dealing with support, and purchasing again.
  • Creating a customer journey map allows you to see and plan the customer’s experience, and allows you to find problem areas that could turn some customers away or reduce your profitability.
• Optimize Pricing
  • Pricing is a significant issue for most companies, and getting it right can mean the difference between marginal margins and exceptional profits.
  • There are numerous ways to develop an effective pricing strategy, including comparative pricing analysis, value pricing analysis, and conjoint analysis, among others.
• Add New Offerings
  • Offering new products and services to existing customers can expand your revenue fairly quickly.
  • New offerings allow you to sell more to existing customers and per transaction.
• Add New Markets
  • New markets (think both domestic and international) can open opportunities for growth that you may not be able to accomplish locally.
  • If your existing market is saturated, this may be a necessary strategy for growth.
• Leverage Partners
  • Working with partners to access a new market and/or to provide a total solution to customers can be one of the fastest ways to grow revenues.
  • Selecting the right partners is something you need to do carefully, as a poor choice could cause more harm than good.
  • Look for partners who have complementary offerings, and who have access to your ideal customers.
  • You can leverage partners to expand geographically as well as into additional accounts in your existing coverage area.

The Control Center for the Revenue Generator™ is where you get to watch how the system is operating and influence the speed and effectiveness of each component to keep the system running optimally.

Let Big Think help you build and adjust your Control Center to monitor your unique business processes and metrics.