What is the real value of any business? Could one answer be its ability to add value to the market by solving a problem for people that are prepared to pay for it? If people are prepared to pay for a product or service, wouldn’t that mean that the customers or prospective customers of your business are one of the greatest assets your business has? If that is true, what are they worth?
Building a pipeline of opportunity is something that few small and medium sized businesses do. This is because there are limited resources and focus tends to be on the next sale or the next opportunity and not necessarily on what the future might look like. A business that is looking to increase its profitability and value will have built into its processes the behaviours and habits necessary to ensure they know what their opportunities across existing customers and prospects are worth. They will have systems and feedback loops telling them what they need to know and where to make adjustments to increase the results they are looking for.
What future opportunities do you have with your current customers? What future opportunities do you have with your prospect base? What are those opportunities worth? Can you answer that question in real-time? Does the question get reviewed regularly with your team? Being able to specifically identify your opportunities does not need to be an exhaustive stand-alone exercise. Incorporating new processes into the daily workflow of your team should produce these answers without much effort. Having these answers available in real-time will change how you run your business and your bottom line.
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