Growing a business is quite difficult, especially if you’re dependent on equity funding, or most of your money is tied up in invoices and other obligations. In this write-up, we will be providing you with tips on how you can use the money that you’ve already spent to grow your business.
Build a Sales Funnel
Perhaps this is the fastest way to build your business. Before you dive into building a sales funnel, you first need to do is understand the concept of sales funnels.
What is a Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel refers to every step that a possible customer has to take so that they can become your customer. Your sales can happen through a retail store, website, email, or sales team. Building and understanding your sales funnel will help you find issues in it that you can work on to make your business better.
How Do You Build a Sales Funnel?
The first step is to create awareness of your business and product. You can do this through methods like email newsletter signups, online surveys, and ebook downloads. Make sure to present your business as a solution to your customers’ issues. Therefore, find the problem and build content around the problem as a way to draw clients in.
Once you have created awareness of your business and product, the next step is to gain clients’ interests. You can do this through a series of emails. Use stories that the clients can relate to and angle them in such a wat that they share information about your business. Make sure to convey the stories in a manner that will attract the interest of your clients.
The next step is to get your prospective clients to decide to buy from you. This is perhaps the hardest part of building a sales funnel. Most clients go straight to the customer reviews and testimonials before clicking on the buy link. Therefore, make sure that you have the best ratings and many positive reviews. You can also use the power of social media and advertising.
Finally, you have the action. This refers not to the number of clicks you get but the number of people who decide to make the purchase.
Come up with a loyalty program for your customers
Creating a loyalty program is an incredible way of building your business. The program will help you to retain the customers you already have and the new ones that join the team. It also works to attract new clients and acts as a motivator to your clients to make more purchases with you. Make sure that the program is accessible to all your existing clients for added efficiency.
Try R&D funding
Most governments around the world work hard towards funding the development of local businesses for the sake of the countries’ economies. Using government funding, you can easily grow your company using money that you have already spent. Before we get into who can and who can’t get R&D funding from the government, you first need to understand what it is all about.
What is R&D funding?
Research and development expenditure refers to money that is used to pay for the operating costs of companies whose main business is conducting research and development. Local governments often have schemes that offer a tax refund or offset if a company invests in R&D. This takes a long time to materialize, so a lot of companies take out an advance
Who is Eligible?
To get R&D funding, you have to send an application and get approved both by the local government and the R&D funder. You can only apply for R&D funding if:
- You are testing how feasible your idea is to make sure that it is doable and will work
- You are creating a new product, process, or service
- You are looking to improve a product or service that is already existing through the processes of research and development
Local differences may apply, but R&D funding exists in many countries worldwide, including Canada, Australia, and the UK. For more information, click here.
Try using licensing deals
This is perhaps the easiest method of growing your business. Licensing deals means that you license your product to other people with whom you get to share part of your revenue. Try doing this with a company that is already established and has a wide client base.
Use Invoice Finance
The role of invoice finance is to help businesses unlock money that is tied up in unpaid invoices. What happens is that you sell your invoice to a third party who will pay you a portion of the amount that your invoice is worth. Afterward, you have to give the third party a cut of the invoice once it is paid for in full.
What happens is that you sell goods and services to a customer and write them an invoice. Before the customer clears the invoice, you send it to a third party who is an invoice finance provider who, most of the time, is a government organization. The third-party will award you a portion of the face value of the invoice in less than two days. You can use this money to keep your business afloat before the customer pays you. Once your client has settled the debt, you will have to pay back the amount given by the third party as well as a service fee. The payment will have to go through the invoice service provider before it gets to you.
The tips mentioned above can help you accelerate the growth of your company and make sure you’re using your investments wisely. We hope that you enjoyed the read and learned a few tips that you can apply to your business. If you have, make sure you share the article. Also, make sure to leave a comment below and let us know what you think.