When sales stall, most business owners reach for the same fix: more leads, more advertising, or another salesperson. If the business needs to grow, more customers feels like the obvious answer.
For a business that is still finding its feet, it usually is. Once you’re past $750k and customers are already coming through the door, it often isn’t. You might already be working weekends to keep up, or watching revenue climb while profit goes backwards. Adding more sales to that business means more of the same problems.
The strategies to increase sales that work at this stage start inside the business. Here are five places to look first, in the order to tackle them.
Why More Sales Is Often the Wrong Place to Start
Growth puts pressure on every part of a business. In a lot of businesses, pricing hasn’t kept pace with cost inflation, so each sale earns less margin than it did in the past. Plenty of businesses also only run smoothly when the owner is in every meeting, so more work turns straight into longer days.
If you have a shit business and you make it bigger, you end up with a big shit business with holes you could drive a truck through. Make the work you already have profitable first. Growth comes after that.
Strategy 1: Price What You Already Sell Properly
Most owners are undercharging, and few of them meant to. Wages, materials, insurance, rent and energy have all gone up, and prices haven’t followed. Add in discounts to win jobs and quotes based on old costs, and your margin shrinks a little more each year.
This is often the quickest win in the whole business. On $3M in revenue, a 5% price increase is an extra $150,000, and good customers rarely leave over a fair increase. The ones who do were usually only there for the price.
Don’t just put everything up by the same amount. Look at which customers and jobs make you the most money, where your quotes are too low, and what you’ve been giving away for free.
Strategy 2: Fix the Leaks Before Chasing New Work
Every business has money slipping through the cracks. It might be quotes that never got a follow-up call, customers who bought once and never came back, or extra work done on the job that never made it onto an invoice. Winning some of that back is usually easier than finding brand new customers.
It doesn’t take long to find. Start with three checks:
- Look at the quotes you sent in the last 90 days that didn’t go ahead. How many did nobody follow up?
- Look at your top 20 customers from two years ago. Are they still buying as much? If not, find out why.
- Compare your last 10 finished jobs with what you invoiced. Was everything billed?
Make it a quarterly habit and you’ll catch the leaks before they show up as a cash problem.
Strategy 3: Make Sure the Business Can Handle More Work
If most sales and decisions still run through you, more sales means more hours for you. Before chasing growth, the business needs to be able to carry it.
That means having people who can win and run jobs without you, and systems your team can follow without calling you every hour. It also means knowing which jobs make you money. The bank balance alone won’t tell you that. Get those in place and growth stops eating into your week.
Strategy 4: Get Clear on Who You Want to Sell To
In the early years, most owners take whatever work comes in, and that makes sense at the time. A few years later, the business is often still carrying customers who pay late, complain often and cost more to look after than they’re worth.
Try ranking your customers by how much profit they make you, then rank them again by how much hassle they cause your team. The ones near the top of both lists are the customers to build your sales around. Take a hard look at the ones near the bottom of both. Letting some of them go can free up time and lift your margin faster than winning new work.
This can feel hard, because you worked hard to win every customer. But the wrong customers take up time and energy your team could spend on the good ones.
Strategy 5: Get More From the Customers You Already Have
The customers you already have are the cheapest sales you’ll ever make. They already trust your work, so they’re far more likely to buy again or send a mate your way than a stranger is to pick up the phone.
It only works if it happens every time. Ask for a referral at the end of every job you finish well, and set up review requests to go out automatically. Book in regular check-ins with your best customers, and have a clear next product or service ready for people who have bought from you once.
Where to Start
If sales have stalled, or growth is costing you more hours than it’s making you money, start inside the business. Fix your pricing and plug the leaks. Make sure the business can carry more work without you, and focus on the customers worth keeping. Once that’s done, spending more on marketing or another salesperson will pay off.
That’s the work we do with owners inside Inner Circle. If this sounds like your business, feel free to request a meeting with our team.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best strategies to increase sales for an established business?
Start with pricing, following up on quotes and past customers, and making sure the business can handle more work without you. Then focus on your most profitable customers and build in referrals and repeat business. More marketing or another salesperson rarely helps much until those are sorted.
Why is my revenue growing but my profit staying flat?
Usually because the team and systems haven’t grown with the revenue, so money gets lost to unbilled work, difficult customers and wasted time. The other common cause is pricing that hasn’t kept up with rising costs, so each sale earns less than it used to. Both can be fixed, and selling more won’t fix either.
How do I increase sales without hiring more salespeople?
Look at your pricing, follow up on quotes and past customers, and ask for repeat business and referrals from the customers you already have. All three cost less and work faster than hiring, and most businesses don’t do enough of any of them.
Should I stop working with unprofitable customers?
Often, yes. A small group of customers usually causes most of the hassle, costs more to look after than they bring in, and takes up time that could go to better customers. The hard part is being honest about who they are, because most owners feel loyal to the customers who backed them early on.
When should I invest in more marketing or more salespeople?
Once the business can handle the growth. Ask yourself: if sales jumped 20% next month, would the business cope? If not, put the money into fixing that first. If it would, that’s the time to spend more on marketing and sales.
