7 tips to grow your business & sales in 2010

Fine-tune whatever you sell. It doesn’t matter if you sell a product or a service. Either way you should be asking yourself if it can be improved. If the offering itself can’t be polished then what can be done to change the way it reaches and excites the buyer?

Look carefully at your competitors. Who are they? Where are they? What are they doing, saying, selling, charging? How are they weaker or stronger than you? Study what the enemy do particularly well, then look for ways that you can do better still. Being better than your competitors – even in a small way – will give you a point of difference.

Create a point of difference. Being different from your competitors is an advantage because it helps you stand out – and if you stand out you become easier to notice and easier to remember. Being different also means you don’t need to compete head-on with an identical offering so you’ll spend less time, effort and money on marketing – it’s win-win!

Map your market. How crowded is it? Who else is there? What might change? Eighty percent of the products we use today did not exist 25 years ago. That’s a huge amount of changes and somewhere along the way those changes created winners as well as losers. The trick is to look ahead and see change coming. Once you know that, you should aim to be a part of it rather than a victim of it.

Know your own business. No enterprise can prepare for an offensive without first taking stock of its situation. Be realistic. What shape are you in? Are you well resourced, running smoothly and in profit? Or are you desperate, poorly funded and weak? The answer to these questions should influence whatever is contained in your plan of action.

Be honest about your skills. Nobody can be good at everything. Nobody can be everywhere at once. Nobody can really be effective if they work 24/7. Realise where your time is most productively spent then task others to do everything else. If you are aware of weaknesses in your personal skills repertoire which might create weaknesses in the business, then seek professional advice or coaching to help you plug the gaps.

Don’t overlook your personality. Frequently the magic ingredient that sets one company apart is not WHAT it does, which is very seldom unique, but the WAY it does things – which almost certainly IS unique. Identify the values and traits that make your business special, then celebrate and amplify them.

We live in exciting times. Rather than hope to succeed why not seize the day and plan to succeed. Don’t miss the next seven pointers.