How To Grow Your Sales In a Down Economy

By Ashley Laine

So the Economists tell us that we are not in a recession and that large companies are doing better than ever, yet so many of my small business friends are struggling to build their business right now. I do small business consulting at times and I find the same mistakes over and over again that is keeping people from really taking off in their business no matter what the economy is.

You have two things that matter in building a business, one is how you build revenue and the other is how you control expense. Many of us as small business owners focus on the control expense part, yet we often do it at the expense of truly creating the revenue we could if we did a couple of key things.

Lets take a minute and talk about controlling expenses first. In the fist business I started I thought I needed the best office furniture and a car that would impress my clients. Then I saw one of my friends who was driving a Honda and who had second hand furniture in her office in a less swanky area of town making much more money than I was. I was struggling because I had spent money on things that would not create a bit of revenue for me.

I found my clients were impressed by me, my product and my prices much more than my office furniture and my car. That was a tough lesson to learn and I think that it was my lack of experience and insecurity that caused me to nearly fail in that first venture. Buy second hand furniture and keep your expenses to a minimum for the first four years of your business. Build up a large cash reserve because at some point you will need it.

Creating revenue is the top priority of any business. Otherwise you are just creating massive debt and that does not help anyone. Prioritizing you time and jobs in the office is a huge problem for most small business owners. They are chief cook and bottle washer and they look around and they wonder why they are working eighteen-hour days and they hate their life.

If it is not making revenue, that means bringing money in the door, it is not your job. Pay someone else $12 per hour to do those things that are time wasters like sifting through spam, checking voice mails, answering your phones and only allowing the calls through that matter to your business making money.

The point is that your time is best-spent making money. If you are doing this then you do not have to worry about being able to afford to hire an assistant to do those things that make absolutely not money for you at all. If you can make the distinction between time wasters and moneymakers as far as your daily activities are concerned you will explode your business no matter what the economy is doing.

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Last Updated on Wednesday, 19 December 2007 00:51