Generate More Revenue from Your Strengths

By Allan Berger, Berger Business Advisors
Our businesses are continually impacted by external changes over which we have no control. I have had several recent conversations with clients and prospects that are reexamining their business models considering the COVID pandemic, fluctuations in market conditions, and other factors. 

Are you monitoring external changes impacting your business?  What are you doing about them? 

​​Identify Your Strengths
 
A good place to start is to identify the strengths of your business.  What are they?   Business owners can enumerate their perception.  Are they real or what they would like them to be?  Owners may be surprised when customers or employees have different opinions.  As businesses evolve, an organization’s strengths change.   Business conditions, competition, technology, and other factors impact an organization constantly.
 
Confirm Your Strengths

How do you confirm your organization’s strengths?   Three obvious groups of people are: 

1. Customers
2. Selected or all key employees
3. Trusted advisors like your accountant, financial planner, lawyer, or business advisor.

 
What information Do You Want?
 
Start with the end in mind.   Why are you asking the questions and what information are you expecting to receive?   Each group will give you different answers based upon how the questions are posed.  To create usable information, the questions should be designed to elicit answers that can be easily consolidated and summarized. 
 
What questions should you ask?   That depends on your business and the information you want to gather.  For example, you may want to determine what new products and services that are not currently offered could add potential revenue streams.
 
How Can You Obtain The Information?
 
These questions can be posed in person, on a phone call or sent as an electronic survey.  You can do it yourself.   If you are a consumer-oriented business, you could use your Facebook for Business page to elicit feedback from your fans.   If your customers are other businesses, LinkedIn offers several ways to interact with prospects, customers, and strategic partners.
 
Alternatively, you can create an electronic survey using free or low cost tools like www.surveymonkey.com.  These electronic tools will automatically summarize the results.  When you have the consolidated results, they can be used as your starting point to reassess your business strategy and the sales, marketing, products, and services you could offer.
 
How Will You Use The Information?
 
How will you use the answers to build your business?  When the results are analyzed, action items will be identified.  Some action items may be short term and yield quick results.   Others could lead to fundamental business model changes that will take more time to implement.
 
Ultimately, the action items can lead to the discovery of new revenue generating ideas.  Converting these into new products and services can strengthen your competitive position.
 
When was the last time you validated your organization’s strengths?   If it has been more than a year, it may be time to revisit them.
 
Berger Business Advisors has a process to take ideas and turn them into new revenue streams. For more information, contact us at (862) 209-1363, or [email protected].