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Opportunities

Introduction

Today I’d like to talk about opportunities, and, whilst this is very positive to sort of help you identify the opportunities out there.

I just want to start off getting you to think firstly about the cost of lost opportunities.

If you are in a business, busy entrepreneur, sometimes you can just get busy being busy and, opportunities just pass you by, and, understanding the cost of lost opportunities.

What each job’s worth for you.

Whether that be revenue.

Or certainly, bottom line profit,  how many of those are you actually missing on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, by not being focused or having your ears and eyes tuned into, seeking out opportunities?

What is the Cost?

First and foremost, do that quick exercise.

  • Check out what a job, or the bottom line’s worth for you.
  • Check out if you miss one or two of those a month, what is it really costing you bottom line?

How is it restricting your business growth?

So, once you’ve got that understood as a number, what I’d then like you to do is sort of start to plot out, on a pad, on a spreadsheet, it doesn’t really matter, where new opportunities are currently lined, where, extract and get into your profit and loss account for higher revenues.

So, a couple of ideas.

One of the obvious ones, that a lot of people miss is in competition.

If your business has a range of products and services that only cover a part of your market, then teaming up under a collaboration, or a partnership with another business who may be in a similar niche than you are.

Put your expert services together, can really open up a lot of opportunities.

I’m currently working with a transport business and, they cover the north of England.

Whereas the partnership they’re just about to craft and create with a company is one who covers the south of England.

Together, as a collaborative force, they can now tender together for bigger contracts where the vendor requires national service, the niche covers Scotland down to Lands End.

So they can now open up new tenders as a collaborative joint venture, or a merger, or a partnership, or whatever option that is.

So, opportunities in competitors, where they can do a product or a service that you can’t, is a great way, and one that’s not obvious straight out of the bat, but certainly one that’s worth exploring.

Secondly, look at your product range, and then look at your existing customers.

How many customers do you have that’s bought say, product A?

Then, look at the fit.

Is there a natural, sort of, progression for that company to buy product B, or product C, as either a cross-sell or an upsell?

Again, too many businesses today are saying, “Well, this customer’s, “he’s happy with what we do, he thinks we’re great.”

But, write this phrase down: ‘You will miss 100% of the sales you don’t ask for.’

Sales

So, that is: ‘You’ll miss 100% of the sales you don’t ask for.’

By not just taking the time to sort of map out your customers in one column.

The products that they’ve bought in another and what complementary products and services would go with that.

There may just be a lot of low hanging fruit there for you to go to businesses and your customers and say, “Hey, people who bought this also bought that.”

Look how Amazon do that.

You buy a product, add it to your cart, and they’re suddenly dropping you with the upsell or the co-sell, saying, “People who bought this also bought that.”

So, not only look at your competitors, but also look at your existing customers, and try and bolt on or upsell or cross-sell a product or service.

Finally, I’m not asking you to do the impossible, but look at what’s not being done in your marketplace.

To finish off, think about it this way, if there is a gap in the marketplace, maybe a little bit difficult to enter.

May need some research and strategy around it, then for sure, why not open up a project with your team, or get it on the whiteboard and think,

  • “How could I fill that gap?”
  • “Could I create a new product that fills that gap?”
  • “Could I partner with another company that fills that gap?”

Survey your customers.

Find out what they need, what’s the biggest challenge at pay point?

Just because it’s difficult, doesn’t mean to say it’s impossible.

So look at what’s currently not being delivered, or how you can deliver something that your customers are looking for, to really create opportunities

Mike Midgley

Mike Midgley is the Strategy Director at 6teen30 Digital and a dynamic digital entrepreneur, nxd, strategist, public speaker and host of TheOpenMike Podcast show & Co-Host at The Inbound Podcast. Mike has achieved successful six and seven-figure exits over a 25-year career, raised in excess of £1.6m [$2.5m] in Venture Capital and highly experienced with franchising.