Hidden Profit Areas for Growing Your Business

As previously stated, our plan will always be to grow our business by concentrating on those primary profit centers that have worked for us since day one. We will continue to grow additional profit centers through the careful and critical selection of complementary and ancillary products and services.

However, Ive found in many businesses there are often commonly overlooked profit areas from which to benefit. Many business owners I have met spend huge amounts of time and energy searching for the next best product or service, or trying to stay at the forefront of their industry or vertical market. And often, the answer to increased profitability is right under their nose. Sometimes simple enhancements to existing offerings can lead to improved efficiencies, reduced expenses and maximized profitability.

Such overlooked areas include:

• Leveraging the appropriate technology to help operate and run your business . This is different from adopting technology for technologys sake. Its about investing in the right critical technologies (such as the right Killer App also known as a critical business software applicationto manage your business workflow) that will provide a definite return on investment and allow you to scale and maximize profits.

• Maximizing the profitability of existing products and services. Sometimes the simple redistribution or repackaging of an existing product or service can lead to increased profitability without any significant increase in cost. Recently, Dataprise increased the number of monthly on-site support hours under its Platinum network support plan from 12 to 14 per month for the same monthly fee. At first pass, this looks like weve given away something for nothing. However, we found that almost immediately our sales increased because the 2 additional hours per month seemed to resonate with prospective clients much better than the 12 (which is what we had hoped). Since initiating that promotion, weve seen our Platinum plan sales increase by over 25%.

• Reducing unneeded expenses . This is easier to say than to do. But almost every small company Ive ever seen is guilty of not doing a better job in prioritizing expenses. Its critical that every business review their expenses on a regular basis to see what can be reduced if not eliminated. Some examples include labor costs, utilities, insurance, rent and incidentals. Theres always room to chop if you are willing to bite the bullet and help maximize profits. The trick is doing it early, before you get into trouble and youre too far under water.

• Mining your existing customer base . Its generally much more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to sell additional products and services to an existing one. If youve adopted the approach of selling a set of core offerings that are augmented by complementary products and services, its easy to see how leveraging your existing base can pay dividends relative to finding new customers.