4 innovative ways to increase revenue streams

Instead of pushing the usual idea that increasing your business revenue is all about creating new income streams, we had a good long think about creative practices that businesses can implement to generate extra revenue from what they already have. Below are the fruits of our labour, and they include happier employees, optimising your resources, banking on your values, and fully appreciating your existing customers.

1. Promote satisfaction in your team and see the results

As an employer, focusing on increasing happiness among your team is not only a great end unto itself, but also positively affects the overall success of your business. A great work culture helps businesses to attract and retain excellent employees and motivate a better work ethic, and it has also been found to increase profitability. In fact, companies with happy, engaged staff are 22% more profitable than those with unengaged staff.

That’s great to know in theory, but where to begin? ‘Make your staff happier’ can sound like a pretty daunting task - but there are a few simple ways to begin the journey:

Communication

• Try tools like SurveyMonkey, Stickybeak or 15Five to quickly and efficiently receive feedback from your whole team.
• Also remember to keep other channels of communication open, so that people feel free to tell you if they are experiencing a problem at work or have a suggestion for improvement.

Focus on health and wellbeing

• Provide a basket of fruit each week for a quick, healthy snack - companies like Honesty Box or Fruit Guys deliver fruit to your door in New Zealand, and Work Fruit does the same in Australia.
• Organise healthy shared lunches in the office.
• Encouraging your team to get some fresh air or exercise together during their breaks.

Celebrate success

• If someone in your team has excelled or achieved an important goal, make sure that it’s acknowledged!

You can find more excellent suggestions for improving employee satisfaction here.

2. Fully utilise your space and resources

One of the easiest ways to create new revenue streams is to make better use of your existing resources. Parkable has found that the average company car park has between 20 and 35% of its space unoccupied during the workday, and many offices have more desk space than they currently need. Instead of having these resources go underused, why not lease them to people outside your business and make some extra income?

Share your car park

If you have a parking space that has spare capacity, consider using the Parkable app to share your extra bays with others and help you achieve some easy extra revenue. Simple to use and flexible to suit your schedule and work hours, leasing your extra parking bays can bring in revenue every month with almost no effort on your part. Pretty neat, right?

Share your office space

Hot desking is another easy way to immediately increase revenue, as well as bringing fresh faces (and fresh ideas) to your business. You should look for people who can bring their own unique energy and experience into your building, so that your workplace becomes more enjoyable as well as more profitable. Try Shared Workspace for Australia or Shared Space for New Zealand to find hot deskers.

3. Market yourself based on your values

In many industries, you will have a huge number of competitors. How do you set yourself apart from other businesses that do something similar to you? One option is to market yourself based not only on the quality of your product or service, but on your values.

Sustainability and revenue

For example, reports by Nielsen and Harris Interactive demonstrate that businesses promoting their sustainability practices and values boosts public awareness, purchasing, and customer loyalty.

• Companies committed to sustainability had their sales increase by 4% between 2015 and 2016, compared to under 1% growth for other businesses.
• In 2016, 66% of respondents said they are willing to pay more for sustainable products.
• Sustainability can sway purchasing decisions for 45% of consumers.

Where to start? Here are a few easy steps, and the local companies that are carving out a niche by practicing sustainable and prosocial business methods.

1. Change all of your packaging to recyclable or compostable materials - or go packaging-free! Some inspiring examples of this are NZ’s GoodFor Wholefoods Refillery and Australia’s Zero Waste Store.
2. Train your employees according to your values, and ask them for their ideas on how you can act on them.
3. Conserve water and electricity. Swap for efficient light fittings and heating, choose a power company that only uses renewable electricity, and use water-efficient dishwashers and toilets.
4. Put some of your profit towards a good cause. This could be an environmental group, a local project, or a charity - the One Percent Collective is a great place to start for organising regular donations.

Whether it’s your environmentalism, your support for community projects, or whatever else your business really cares about, chances are there will be other people who care too, and they’ll be thrilled to find you.

4. Make the most of the customers you have

Many businesses will be using upselling and cross-selling techniques without even knowing it, because often, it’s just a natural part of the sales process. If you’re already onto the terms, skip ahead - otherwise, here are some quick and dirty definitions.

• Upselling is when you go into a cafe to buy a sandwich and are asked, “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer the two-course lunch special?” You are being offered something more expensive than what you planned to purchase.
  
• Cross-selling is when you’re buying your sandwich and are asked, “Do you want a drink with that?” You are being offered a complementary product.

However, what it really means is making the most of the customers who are already purchasing your products or services - something which many businesses underestimate in the quest to grow their customer base. Whether your business uses these techniques consciously or not, the importance of upselling and cross-selling for revenue is huge.

• It is around 50% easier to resell to an existing customer than to sell to someone new, according to Marketing Metrics.
• Increasing customer retention by just 5% can increase profitability by between 25% and 95%.
• 20% of your current customers will provide 80% of your business’s future revenue.
• Around 30% of e-commerce revenue comes from upselling and cross-selling.

Here are some easy ways to boost your upselling and cross-selling, which could have huge impacts on increasing your revenue.

1. Email everyone on your customer database whenever you have an exciting new product, sale or announcement to make. Many of your customers might not be aware that you’ve launched something new, so why not reach out? Check out MailChimp if you don’t already use an email platform.
2. Look at your sales records to figure out what products or services people tend to buy together. If you find trends, you can cross-sell the products with the knowledge that they’re likely to be popular.
3. Make an effort to improve your customer service, and request feedback on your service from customers so you know exactly where you can improve. GetFeedback is a good tool to use, or it could be another use for SurveyMonkey.
4. Increase customer engagement by creating a quarterly newsletter, becoming active on social media, implementing prize draws, and giving out ‘thank you’ coupons to show your appreciation.

Well, that’s it from us! We hope that you’ve found some positive and innovative suggestions for increasing your business revenue.