Welcome to Expand Your Reach!
It’s my weekly update where I share advice and responses to important questions about how to use Leverage to grow your business.
Today’s lesson is about how you can zoom in into your business so closely and see all the various processes involved in the operation and zoom out to improve the processes.
Here’s an excerpt of the question I was asked by a friend that inspired today’s lesson.
Its Joshua, A Fashionpreneur, who deals in selling quality fashion accessories
I own a fashion accessories business in one of the Top Universities in Nigeria.
I started the Business in the institution two years ago and started off selling directly to the student without owning a store front.
I’m now at a point where I want a high percentage of the students on campus to know about my Brand which in turn will increase my revenue.
How can I use Leverage to achieve this?
Thank you for this interesting question, Joshua. I’m sure a lot of people will learn from the advice.
When it comes to Leverage as applied to your type of business, there are six important areas i will like you to open your possibility mentality to.
I’ll discuss each of these six areas so you can make the best decision for your business.
The first factor is Relational capital.
How many other businesses that are not a direct competitor to your product that you could form a relationship with so that they can introduce your product to their own client base. You can meet with some other business who already have access to students that you don’t have, it might be the Dry cleaners, the Barbers, hair stylist, the buttery attendant and tell them to introduce your brand whenever a student comes to patronize them. It can be saying something trivial like “i have a friend who sells quality wrist watches and fashion accessories at a very good price, in fact i bought this my wrist watch from him (sell wrist watch to them to pay up on installment so they will have tangible evidence to market your quality stuff) should you be interested, here’s is his contact, so he can show you his product catalogue”. And anytime a student they refer buys from you, you will give them a 10% commision on every first sale. The beauty of this is be true to your word and don’t make a promise you can’t fulfill. If your integrity is in check, you just employed tens of ambassador to market your brand without breaking the bank
The second area I want you to look at is this, could you package your product in a different way, size or combination and strike a relationship to put your product as a complimentary gift to what they are already selling. For example: meet with a fashion designer that you will sell brooch, conflinks, lapel rose on an wholesale price (since most people who wears outfits nowadays use one of the three accessories) all they need to do is to enhance the value of what they deliver and make the delivery inclusive of the accessories. Striking a deal like this with five fashion designers will open another revenue streams for the business
The third thing is, could you package other people’s products with your product or how many new products could you come up with that are your natural extension. Ask yourself, what other product does the people who buy from me need to complete how they want to appear to the world. Answering this question can open vast ideas of opportunities for the business.
Another thing is to look at your existing client base, maybe there’s a type of people that are attracted to your product and you may have never even realized it. That you may have a natural appeal to some people, age or sex, professional type. Realizing this alone could spotlight an incredible market to go after.
And the last thing to look into is your Process improvement: every Business can be broken down into its driving process. If you can get 1% improvement in the process involved in the running of your business and consistently maintain the improved process for 2 month, your business would have 6X itself in size and revenue in just two month. Process occurs whenever you do anything, this occurs the way you upload your accessories on your media, your sale approach, delivery of your product, inventory, how and where you buy your accessories, how you deal with client on the phone, handle complain, take an order, client reward system and there is a massive room for improvement in your process.
“The whole notion came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into running your business, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”
Make sense?
Don’t forget to forward this content to your smart friends so they can learn.
And until my next content,
Always remember: Leverage is a potent force you can use to Expand your Reach.
Abiodun Joseph 