When you're looking for clients, sometimes the answer is right under your nose

One of my clients, let's call him Kevin, had been doing OK.

But he was in a bit of a rut. There was growing competition in his industry and he knew that if he didn't move forwards, he'd get left behind.

But he didn't know where to begin.

The advantage of having ten years of business experience behind you is you have a whole raft of previous clients. In Kevin's case, lots of previous clients that he'd done one bit of work for and never spoken to again.

But Kevin's industry was one of those where the regulations meant you needed to get certification every two years. That was a lot of repeat business he was missing out on.

So we took all his previous customer data - which was scattered all over the place.

Some was in various folders on his (creaking) server in the office.

Some was stored as emails in his mailbox.

Some was in paper reprints of his certificates that were in a filing cabinet.

We got all that data together, compiled it into one big spreadsheet. And imported that into the system.

Now he knew, at a glance, which of his previous customers he still had contact details for. He knew, at a glance, in which month their recertification was due (remember, it was every two years, so it was likely in the same month each time).

And then we added in an automated "to-call" list.

The system just looked at previous customers who had a recertification due in three months and flagged them up. If we didn't have contact details, someone would look them up and fill it in on the database. And once we did have contact details, we would ring them, asking if they needed recertification.

This was easy.

The system picked out the prime candidates automatically.

The call was easy - your certification is probably up for renewal anyway and we've worked for you before.

And the call had one of three outcomes.

• "No" or "Not Found". In which case, we flagged them up as "do not contact".
• "Maybe". Perhaps it was the right month but the wrong year. In which case, we scheduled a follow up call at a time that suited.
• And "Yes". In which case, Kevin had won some repeat business from someone he hadn't spoken to in years.

Kevin was pleased. It was working. The "Yes"es were piling up.

It was an incredibly simple system.

If your business is struggling, there are five areas where you can make similar, incredibly simple changes. These are:

• Finance - the business needs a degree of profit to survive. You need to make sure the bills are paid, the team get their wages and you get something as a reward for all your hard work.
• Operations - the business needs to run like clockwork. You need to make sure you consistently deliver a great service to your clients, or they won't come back.
• Sales - no business can survive without clients, so you have to make sure you've got new ones coming in at the right times.
• Leads - if you want new clients, you have to get the word out there, make sure you're attracting people and letting them know what you do.
• Time - at the end of the day, you need to be able to switch off, safe in the knowledge that the business can look after itself. You've taken a huge risk in getting this far, you deserve some time to ourselves to enjoy your life.

Once you identify the area of greatest impact for YOUR business, there are simple changes that can make a massive difference.

So instead of trying to tackle them all at once, you can focus on the area that will free up the most time and money, giving you the most freedom to live your life the way you should be.

If you'd like to know which area you should concentrate on - and get a few ideas about improvements that can be made in that area - take my quick quiz. It only takes a few minutes and can point you in the right direction for making a positive change to your business.