You might think that this is a fairly obvious thing to do if you are in business but market research I carried out last year proved that most established companies get most of their business from existing business and referrals; in fact the average was 70% of new sales.
There are many reasons why you should not consider new markets, here are just a few:
- Referrals and repeat business work are much more profitable
- The conversion rate is much higher
- New markets can be risky and expensive to explore
I agree with all of the above and would go as far as saying that if your business does not get at least 50% of its new sales from referrals and repeat business, something must be wrong. There is no denying that when you call a prospect who was referred to you, it’s a much nicer conversation which does not require you to get out of your comfort zone.
So why should you explore new markets this autumn?
I believe that generally, your business always needs to be moving forward because standing still is not an option. But at the moment there is a very pressing reason to consider exploring new markets because whatever you think of Brexit, it will affect the UK market greatly. This may well mean that many companies will have less money to spend and will therefore cut back on purchasing, affecting the rate of your repeat business. This might also mean that by default, you will therefore need to work with more companies in order to preserve your sales revenue.
You might still wonder why this means that you need to explore new markets and you will be right because new business can come from two main sources:
- Working with more companies in your existing market
- Working with more companies in new markets
Both will work and both will require you to go out looking for new business you don’t already deal with. Whichever way you choose to go, you need to consider two important factors:
- Developing new business can take time to mature, anything between 6-12 months.
- The longer you leave it the more competition you will have
This is why I recommend that you look into this urgently to make sure that you can start widening your options and developing your sales pipeline. We have recently developed a new lead generation system which we believe can support this process well. Click here to find out more.