Are you sure you need another customer?

Given that most business people are keenly interested to increase the turnover of their business, we present an over view of the numbers that drive turnover.

Of course we all know that one way to increase turnover is to increase the number of customers and many business people work hard at increasing the number of customers they have. In fact most people's marketing plan are almost exclusively focused on this.

However an increase in the number of customers is only one way to increase turnover.

What all accountants are taught is that: Turnover = No of Customers x Av Sale x Av Frequency of Sales

Or to put it into layman's terms your turnover is given by the number of customers you have multiplied by how much they spend multiplied by how often they buy.

The irony of our focus on more and more customers is that getting a new customer often requires more time and money than getting an existing one to spend more or buy more often.

After all we must gain people's trust and establish our credibility before they will even consider a purchase and we need to accept that a percentage will never buy.

So what are alternatives to finding new customers? It turns out we are surrounded by examples of tactics from the big businesses we all interact with.

Methods used to increase the amount we spend, include added extras we are invited to buy, carefully placed in front of us at the right time; pricing strategies, introducing premium pricing according to the timing of the sale or the type of customer etc.

To get people to buy more often we might consider loyalty cards, or marketing copy targeted at existing clients; discount vouchers.