by Kimanzi Constable
Republished from Entrepreneur, October 15, 2018
Chance are, you’ve worked at least one job in your lifetime. You might even be working a job now and building your business on the side. One nice feature of a job is knowing that for every week you work, there will be a paycheck coming your way. When you work full time, you get a steady paycheck. That’s not the case with entrepreneurship.
In a business, there are a number of factors that determine your pay. You get revenue through sales, but that’s not income. Your revenue is subject to taxes and your business expenses. Too often, revenue can be sporadic, leading entrepreneurs to quit or let frustration keep them from taking action.
There is a way to create consistent revenue in your business and implement a plan for constant revenue growth. That happens when you understand and implement these four principles into your business.
1. Create more clarity in your message and platform.
Customers buy from who they know, like and trust but only when they’re clear on what they get for their money. If they aren’t clear on what your products or services are, they won’t spend. They can’t get that clarity if you aren’t clear.
Your tagline, vision and copy throughout your website, social media presence and everywhere your business is advertised must be crystal clear. A potential customer who comes to your business platform should not be confused about what you offer.
Ask two strangers to go through your platform and tell you what they see. Don’t influence them. If what they tell you matches what you do, you’re okay. If not, there are changes that need to be made. Be clear on what your business does and who it helps. Then, brand your business accordingly.
2. Implement a daily lead-generation action plan.
The way to more sales happens when you have prospects in your pipeline. A business thrives or dies based off of its lead generation. For effective lead generation that leads to revenue growth, you need a daily strategy. Consistency is what separates the successful and all others.
You should consider starting each business day with income-producing activities. These can be things like producing expert content, getting interviewed on podcasts and in the media, creating content for other platforms that have an audience, etc.
There are many ways to get access and take advantage of the 3.5 billion people that use the internet every day. More than anything, your content and prospecting are how you’ll add leads to your pipeline.
3. Form strategic partnerships that fuel audience growth and exposure.
You see large corporations and successful entrepreneurs doing this all the time. You find other entrepreneurs and businesses aligned with what you do and offer to combine knowledge, expertise, and audiences to promote each other. This creates a mutually beneficial relationship that adds to the bottom line of everyone who’s involved.
Look at your industry. Study those who does what you do or a great cross-industry. Think about how you can work together. Make the approach. The worst that can happen is they say no. The flip side is you form a partnership that gives you exposure to a new potential customer base. At the very least, you’ll be adding lead genre and prospects.
4. Adjust where needed as you take action.
A good plan builds in some wiggle room. To build a successful business, you need to adjust and implement quickly. Have a time each week when you sit down, examine your plan and make necessary changes. Hire coaches and consultants if you need to for any changes that could lead to more growth and adding even more consistency to your efforts.
There is still a lot of year left. Now is the time to push hard and strive for a record-breaking year. You can and should build in consistent revenue and explosive growth. Use these four principles as a starting guide and keep going. You and you alone have the power to make your goals a reality.