| In the latest in a series of articles on growing your business, Daniel Ronen, director of the Portman Business Consultancy, offers tips on how to increase customer numbers. Most business owners spend time looking at different ways to try and grow their business. The truth is that there is no magic wand, but most businesses benefit the most from doing a combination of many smaller activities, which creates a cumulative effect. However, the search for the key to business growth goes on, with new ideas and concepts being created and tried constantly. Despite its simplicity - there are in fact only four fundamental ways to successfully grow your business: 1. Increase the number of customers New customer acquisition, but only of the type you want to have. 2. Increase the number of times customers come back It is cheaper to sell to an existing customer than a new one - so how can you get them to come back more often? 3. Increase the average value of each sale Get your customers to spend more each time they buy from you. 4. Increase the effectiveness of each process in the business Do more in your business, but for less cost and hassle. Each of these different methods will be outlined in more depth within my series of articles about business growth and development, together with practical examples and tips. The multiplier effect We don't want you to miss out on maximising your business growth benefits - and so that's why it's important to focus on implementing as many of the 'four ways To grow your business' as possible. By implementing actions that cover more than one of the strategies you achieve a 'multiplier effect' - leveraging the benefits cumulatively, much like interest compounds over time. For example: if you implement a strategy that achieves 10% more customers, and a strategy to increase purchase frequency by 10%, and another strategy to increase average spend by 10% - you achieve an overall 33% increase in business size! So by making a simple improvement of just 10% in the 3 areas, a 33% growth in the business is generated, and as long as your costs don't outpace the growth, you will be making more money. So let's take a look at strategies to help us gain more customers. Increase your number of customers Getting more customers is often referred to as 'front end marketing' and essentially focuses on things you can do to attract more customers to buy from you for the first time. Whilst this process seems relatively simple - more customers = more profits - it is important for you to visual your sales process as a series of steps; Conversion rates The process of gaining new customers has three separate steps, each of which need to be carried out, and each of which can be successful in varying degrees: - 1. Attract the prospect
- 2. Offer your goods / services
- 3. Close the sale
As the prospective customer pipeline moves from one step to the next, there may... | 
