When the Revenue Pressure is On

There are two ways to increase profit: either by increasing revenue or decreasing expenses, and there are separate strategies to be employed in each situation.

The quickest way to achieve short-term revenue gain is to sell more to your existing customers. Paisley Consulting has over 500 businesses on our client list. Many of them use one or two of our software products. To increase revenue, we could put together a package of services to enhance the tools they already have, we could sell them follow-up training or consulting, or we could cross-sell them on one of our other tools, which may complement a tool they already have. Here, product delivery is crucially important. The ability to deliver a customized solution on time and to the customers specifications is a key to maintaining long term customer satisfaction.

To achieve significantly higher growth rates over a longer time frame, we would have to look at new offerings. New products would be the first place I would go, followed by new consulting services.

On the other hand, looking to decrease expenses, the first place to cut costs would be in vendors , contractors and optional services. We could probably find a 10% cost reduction right there. If I needed to go farther we would look at facilities, travel expenses, reimbursement policies and benefits. The last place I would go, however, is the firing of employees. Our employees are loyal to us and we need to be loyal to them; its the employees that make the business successful.