How do I grow my Business?

Or should I say how do I win more work and manage the existing business I have?

Lets start with the 1st part, how do I win more work……

The majority of work is either won on price or reputation and in any reasonable procurement process a combination of the two. In this first part I will focus on pricing. So what goes into a price?

Pricing is the most critical component to maximizing your revenue. Harvard studies have found that a 1% improvement in your pricing can add up to 11% to your profits. With bad pricing, you’re missing out on profits in every transaction that you make, not to mention the deals that you completely miss out on.

We need to understand the deliverables and against those deliverables we have outputs; how long the job will take. We obviously need to break down larger projects into elements of work. Each element of work will have labour, plant and materials. We also have key considerations like logistics, methodology and constraints that will strongly influence the price. You will also need to understand the competitive market in which you want to win work.

Importantly your price needs to be sustainable, at a level where you can cover your costs and generate a profit. When you consider these parameters and balance them against the character or contractual relationship with the client, you can then decide how to build your price. This allows you to manage risk, to create the measures to deliver the work successfully and to expand on the opportunities for profit and further work.

A considered price and how that price is built up and presented provides a platform for success.