34. Grow your small business by finding growth gaps

Sales & Business Growth for Busy Women | How to make more sales, have more time, and grow your business

Hey Sales Squad! Welcome back to Sales & Business Growth for BUSY Entrepreneurs. I’m your host and resident sales and business nerd Lindsay, and this podcast is the place for small business owners to learn sales skills, business growth strategies, and how to squeeze more out of your day.

I’ve launched a FREE tool on my website that you can download that we have used to figure out which sales and marketing activities actually create revenue. My SALES GROWTH TRACKER is now available for download on my website - go to LindsayFletcher.co/free-resources. Click on Sales Growth Tracker and drop your email and I will send it over to you immediately, along with steps on how to use it. It has been THE TOOL that we’ve used in our service-based local business and I’m using it to track my sales activities in my consulting business. So go to my website LindsayFletcher.co and click on the free resources tab and you’ll see Sales Growth Tracker at the top of the page! Download it and use it, and be on your way to Sales Success!!!

If you haven’t already, be sure to hit the “follow” button on your podcast app so that you don’t miss anything!

Today we are talking about finding what I call growth gaps. These are areas of opportunity for your business and areas that you might be able to grow your revenue through.

Have you ever done a SWOT analysis of your business? If you haven’t, I highly recommend you do! It’s listing out your business’ Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats - SWOT. SWOT analysis is a tool that will help you define areas of opportunity for your business as well as your strengths, weaknesses and threats, of course. We do this in our business at least once per quarter, and I get bonus points here because I discuss our SWOT with business owner friends of ours, which is also very helpful! I actually like to do this once a month if possible because it keeps us on track and aware as business owners.

Bonus tip: if you’ve never done one, google “SWOT analysis for ______ business”. For example, you’ll google “SWOT analysis for electrician business” or “coaching business”, just insert your type of business. There will be examples online of businesses just like yours that will help you complete your first one. I just urge you to do some thinking on this tool. It’s only helpful if you use it.

Anyway, using the SWOT tool will help you in finding opportunities for your business. You’ll want to look for ways to differentiate your business - pricing, packages, customization of service or products. You can differentiate your business with better communication or exceptional after-sale service. You can differentiate your business with breaking into an area of the market that isn’t served yet. There is a really great example in a very popular brand that we all know and probably many of us use…DoorDash.

DoorDash realized that there was an underserved population in the food delivery industry. While their competitors were going after dense-population with apartment buildings, they decided to go after suburbia with larger family homes AND a significantly higher average order value (AOV) than urban regions. By prioritizing and claiming these wealthier areas, they also won out restaurant delivery services…those restaurants had pre-existing customer bases. They effectively expanded their market instead of throwing elbows to block out enough space for themselves in the existing urban markets.

DoorDash then took it a step further - they started providing insights through data collected to these restaurants…things like popular dishes in the area, customer demographics, and local delivery times. They also offered advertising spots on their app for promotions and sponsored listings.

They’ve become absolutely GENIUS in their recent marketing efforts - they market to hungry videogame players with the “Stay in your game” campaign.

Now, I know that we as small business owners don’t have the capital behind us that DoorDash does, but the moral of this DoorDash story is that your business doesn’t have to look like everyone else’s. Look for opportunities, like DoorDash did, to serve a different population, a different area, a different type of client. Get creative, think outside the box. Start local and market local. Think about who you could serve, who you could serve differently, how you can serve them, what you have to offer, and how you might differentiate your business. And commit some of your sales and marketing efforts toward this type of growth!

If you aren’t sure what sales and marketing activities work for your business, you should definitely download my Sales Growth Tracker. Go to Lindsayfletcher.co/free-resources and click on “sales growth tracker” to download so you can be on your way to figuring out what’s working. I promise that this will save you SO MUCH TIME in the long run!

With that, I send you on your way wishing you more sales, more time and lots and lots of business growth! Talk to you next time!

XO,

Lindsay Fletcher

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