50 Ways to Increase Revenue

Need to increase the revenue coming into your business?  Here are 50 ways to do just that!

By Kathy Fediw, LEED AP ID+C, CLP, CLT

1.  Increase your fees.  Yes, be bold and ask for what you are truly worth.  Charge more for what you do.   See McRae Anderson’s article in this issue of I-Plants if you have even the slightest hesitation about doing this.

2.  Institute an annual cost-of-living increase into your pricing structure.  Everyone understands about a cost of living increase, and most clients expect it.

3.  Stop giving away what you do for free. Stop selling plants without increasing their maintenance fee.  Stop making extra visits to homes without charging when the housekeeper isn’t there when they told you they would be.

4.  Visit your current clients face-to-face on a regularly scheduled basis to see what else they need from you.  Add-on sales from existing clients should be at least 20-25% of your business.

5.  Go after business that will pay you larger dollars—atriums, shopping malls, etc.

6.  Charge for any designs that require drawings or extensive photo work and copyright the design.  If you’ve put time and money into it, you deserve to be paid.  Architects, landscape architects and interior designers get paid for their designs and so should you.  You can incorporate it into the fee for the project if you get it, that’s entirely up to you.

7.  Decrease or eliminate discounts.  Think long and hard about why you are discounting.  Is it out of desperation?  Are you afraid you won’t get the sale?  Did they even ask for a discount?

8. Team up and subcontract with a florist to offer your clients fresh floral arrangements on a weekly basis.  Clients love this!

9.  Reward other staff members handsomely for sales leads and referrals.  Make a big deal out of those payments and make those payments immediately.

10.  Give trusted employees in all positions the authority to sell to the client.

11.  Add on a fuel surcharge.  Most businesses have been doing this for the past several years.  It’s pretty much expected at this point.

12.  Re-think your attendance at networking meetings.  Are you meeting the right people?  Have you gotten any additional business from attending these meetings?  If you haven’t gotten anything out of a networking group after 4-6 visits your time is better spent in the field actually selling something.

13.  Sell more high-end products and drop some of your lowest-priced items from your portfolio.  Or bundle them together into packages (6” pothos plus container, for example.)

14.  Stop selling maintenance-only contracts with no guarantee.  They demoralize your staff, make you look cheap, take more time to maintain and damage your professional image.

15.  Charge for adding topdressing to existing accounts, especially gardens and atriums.

16.  Include the price for materials (topdressing, saucers, etc.) in your “delivery and installation fee.”  Don’t’ give clients a choice by breaking it out!  Be sure to include your price for prepping plants in this fee.

17.  Every time you see a client, ask “who else do you know who could use our services?”  Make your clients into your sales staff!  They may not have a name for you right away, but you’ve planted the seed and the next time they meet someone they’ll remember you.

18. Be extremely visible within your marketplace to attract new customers.  Become involved with organizations your clients are involved in.  Send out news releases to the publications your prospects and clients read.

19. Make all contracts “automatically renewable” AND include an automatic yearly price increase by percentage.  Don’t draw attention to when a contract is up for renewal and therefore up for bid.

20. Sell leases for longer contract periods, 3 to 5 years, in exchange for a slightly lower fee.  Include annual cost-of-living increases into those contracts.

21.  Hire a new cracker-jack sales person to stir things up in your company.  This WORKS!

22.  Only hire highly-competitive people to sell for you.  You want high-energy barracudas who can smell a sale a mile away.

23.  Have a sales contest with a terrific “prize” to light a fire in your sales staff.  Make it tough but do-able.

24. Set a minimum contract amount you’ll bid on, and increase it slightly each year.

25.  Keep track of your closing ratio and train or replace your worst-performing salesperson.

26.  Make sure everyone in your staff looks like you’re worth the amount of money you are asking for.  This includes your sales people, your techs, your drivers—and you!

27.  Improve the quality of your marketing pieces and website so you look like you’re worth a million bucks.  Your marketing should look professional and high-end.

28.  Make it easy for your clients to buy from you.  Have contracts ready to sign when you meet with a client.  For cookie-cutter sales, floral arrangements and corporate gifts you may want to offer packages on your website.

29.  Go after corporate gift business, especially for new tenant gifts in office buildings and gifts for the holidays.

30. Form partnerships with interior designers and architects.  Offer a referral fee.  This is standard in their industry for many companies.

31.  Offer your clients other services such as patioscaping, rooftop gardening, green walls, etc.  If necessary subcontract out the work until you have enough business and expertise to do it yourself.

32. Offer to be a subcontractor for a landscape business. You’ll do the interior, they’ll do the exterior.  Offer to exchange referrals with them.

33. Start selling top-quality silk plants for areas where live plants aren’t practical.

34.  Branch out into nearby cities.  Best way—buy an existing business.

35.  Offer a “plant of the month” program.

36.  If you’re in the right market and location, start a retail store and advertise heavily to your current clients.

37.  Sell your used plants and containers at a flea market, or have a garage sale.

38.  Sell color bowls and color programs to every single customer.  Make this a part of every proposal.  Get creative and come up with packages they can’t refuse!

39.  Sell accessories and artwork that complement plantings.  Team up with a high-end furniture or décor shop in your area, and use it to showcase your plants.

40.  Offer fountains and water features.  Use a subcontractor if you need to.  Sell maintenance service for those fountains and water features, and don’t forget the fish and aquatic plants!

42.  Sell upgrades and updates in plants and containers to existing clients.    You should be recommending upgrades every 3-5 years.  And recommend upgrades at the end of each lease contract, too.  You can use the containers on rentals or other accounts if they are still in good condition.

43.  Strive for route density.  Go after every tenant in that office building where you’re already going.  Then go after every office in the buildings next door.  You have a showcase and referral available in the account you’re already doing and it’s close enough for prospects to go and check you out.  And you’ll be lowering your operating costs while increasing your revenue.

44.  Market in a different way.  If you’re depending heavily on networking, develop a direct mail campaign or improve your website.

45.  Don’t add something new to your inventory unless several customers are asking for it.

46.  Never say “no” to a client or prospect.  Find a way to get the client what she needs without giving it away, even if you have to subcontract it or refer her to someone else.

47.  Give two or three choices on your proposal so you’re competing with yourself instead of “the other guy.”  Limit your choices on a proposal to two or three to make it easier for a client to decide.

48.  If your business is small, concentrate your efforts on a niche market such as building lobbies, hospitals, malls or atriums.  You’ll gain a reputation in your market much faster and get more sales because these people talk to each other.

49.  Always ask yourself “Is what I’m doing now helping to bring in more revenue?”  If it isn’t, stop doing it!  Delegate to someone else if you need to.

50.  Charge for every single thing you do.  No more freebies because you like them.

BONUS:  Reading about sales and marketing only get you so far.  In order to get more sales you have to sell!  So stop reading and get out there and SELL SOMETHING!

Kathy Fediw, LEED AP ID+C, CLP, CLT consults with businesses on pricing stragety and how to increase sales.  To discuss your needs with Kathy please CLICK HERE.

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