As we approach 2025, successful business growth requires more than just hoping for the best or reacting to market conditions. For too many business owners, growth happens by chance—a competitor closes down, a major customer appears unexpectedly, or market conditions temporarily swing in their favor. While this reactive growth might provide short-term gains, it rarely leads to sustainable success.

True business growth comes from taking a systematic, strategic approach to revenue generation. It requires carefully examining every aspect of how your business creates and captures value, from customer acquisition to pricing strategies, from transaction frequency to product mix. The most successful businesses don't leave growth to chance—they engineer it through deliberate action and careful execution.

Whether you're looking to attract new customers, increase transaction frequency, expand your product offerings, or optimize your pricing, this comprehensive guide will give you practical, actionable strategies to drive growth in the coming year.

1. Increase prices with value-based pricing

Full article: Value-based pricing

Value-based pricing is a simple idea: charge what you’re worth. And not what you’re worth to you, or your suppliers, or your former employer - charge what you’re worth to your customers. Your customers don’t care about the cost of materials or the labor hours or your target margins or any other measurements or metrics; your customers care about how you address their needs and solve their problems. Your pricing should reflect that.

“Customers just go with the cheapest option.”

No they don’t. Almost every brand you’ve ever heard of - from Apple to Levi’s Jeans to Procter & Gamble to American Airlines - has priced its products based on value. No matter what industry you’re in, only one business can be the cheapest - everyone else has to compete on value.

“If I raise prices, I’ll lose business.”

You might lose some business, but what remains will be more profitable. Your challenge is to convince your customers that your price is worth what you charge. You do that by communicating your value to them proactively. Some strategies for communicating that value will show up later in this list.

“How do I get started?”

Brainstorm all the ways your business separates itself from its competitors and why those things benefit your customers. Include things like honesty and transparency or professionalism and expertise. Do your employees wear uniforms? Do you use top-of-the-line tools and technology? Have you won awards?

Once you understand your differentiators and the value they bring to your customers, find ways to tell your customers about those things. Include it in your advertising and your sales pitch. Talk about what they mean for your customers and why they’ll be happier with you. Then adjust your prices accordingly.

2. Find new customers in a new marketing channel

Full article: Marketing channel

Marketing channels are places where your customers discover your messaging, e.g. Facebook ads, LinkedIn posts, TV commercials, direct mail, billboards, affiliate partnerships, vehicle wraps, sponsored little league teams, etc. Wherever your customers might encounter you, that’s a marketing channel.

Most small businesses should focus their time and money into a small number of their most impactful marketing channels. If you get a lot of leads from Facebook ads and very little from newspaper ads, you should put your dollars into Facebook ads. That makes sense from a budget perspective - you don’t want to be wasting money, after all.

But if you’ve been using the same channels for years and growth has started to stall, it might be time to add a new channel and allocate some budget there instead. This can be especially helpful if you’ve maximized your impact in existing channels and have reached a saturation point where spending more money gets you diminishing returns. But it can also be helpful for multi-touch attribution: sometimes your prospective customers need to see you more than once before making the decision to buy.

So if you feel like you’ve hit a ceiling with your current marketing channels, introduce something new to the mix. Work with your marketing agency or in-house marketing team to identify a good audience-channel fit, then develop messaging that matches that new channel context. As you collect performance data, don’t be surprised if your legacy channels see a bump in performance as the multi-touch  marketing starts to pay dividends.

3. Eliminate your underperforming marketing channels

Full article: Marketing channel

Similar in thought to #2 above, it might be time to prune your marketing tree. For many small businesses, marketing efforts can shift into autopilot, where the same dollars are spent on the same audiences month after month. It’s easy to miss a slow decline in performance, especially if the month-to-month changes are small or hidden by seasonal fluctuations.

When you prune a tree, removing some branches gives more energy to allow the remaining branches to thrive. If you decide to remove a marketing channel, be sure to shift your time, money, and energy into the remaining channels so they can grow and support your business success. It can be short-sighted to cut overall marketing spend, so move your investment into your highest-performing efforts.

How do you choose what to cut? First, look at one of the most critical KPIs in your business: return on marketing expenses or ROME. (This is different from return on advertising spend - ROAS - which is a metric your marketing agency should provide. Ask your CFO to calculate your ROME if they aren’t already, or schedule a short call with Entrefy - we can calculate it for you.) You can break down your ROME on a per-channel basis, then evaluate which channel needs to be cut.

As mentioned in #2, be aware of multi-touch attribution. Removing a channel might mean that you’re removing a valuable touchpoint for prospects that contribute to the overall success of your marketing efforts. If you aren’t using some kind of multi-touch attribution analysis in your marketing, partner with an agency that provides this service as part of their normal work. It’s an invaluable tool for companies that market across multiple channels.

4. Launch a loyalty program

Full article: Loyalty program

Your current customers are your best source of revenue. They already like your business and your products and services, and ideally they’re pleased with their experience so far. Rather than invest time and money on the difficult challenge of acquiring new customers, why not reward your current customers for their repeat business? That’s where a loyalty program can help grow your revenue.

The goal of a loyalty program is to transform traditional customer relationships into structured relationships built on consistency and long-term value. The customer enjoys a financial benefit from consistently choosing your business over your competitors, and your business enjoys the increased average lifetime value of the relationship. From coffee shop punch cards to airline miles programs, loyalty programs create mutual benefits for both parties.

Although most loyalty programs offer some kind of financial benefit to the customer, these benefits don’t have to be expensive to be valued by customers. Priority scheduling, waived deposits, exclusive lines of communication, and small tokens of appreciation every year can add meaningful value for the customer without squeezing profit margins. Even when loyalty comes with discounts, small reductions in margin can yield larger increases in profit when the discounts drive more volume.

When building a loyalty program, consider four key performance indicators to track success: program participation rate, customer retention rate, purchase frequency, and reward redemption rate. When budgeting, expect to spend at least 2% of customer purchase revenue on rewards and administration, but no more than 10% to protect profitability. Get creative with the benefits and perks, and remember: launching a new loyalty program is a great opportunity to show your loyal customers how much you appreciate them. Expect a bump in sales!

5. Start cross-selling your products

Full article: Cross-selling

Continuing the theme of selling to existing customers, cross-selling is another low-cost strategy for building revenue without the added expense of additional customer acquisition. Cross-selling is the process of selling complementary products or services to existing customers, either when they’re already making a purchase or any time thereafter. Cross-selling comes in a variety of formats, and leverages several other ideas in this article like bundling, product suggestions, and value-added services.

To cross-sell effectively, you need to prioritize your customer’s needs over your own revenue goals. Although it’s tempting to use every sale as an opportunity to earn more business, doing so without considering what your customer’s priorities are is a recipe for a damaged relationship and decreased profitability overall. Have you ever been annoyed by a business trying to sell you a $40 product warranty on an $8 pair of headphones? That sort of “cross-sell no matter what” can be frustrating for salespeople and customers alike.

Instead, try to learn where your customers’ needs are still going unmet even after purchasing your product. Do they need help installing or setting up their new purchase? Would they benefit from peripheral equipment or additional services? For example, an accountant might offer bookkeeping services or payroll management in addition to tax filings. A landscaper might start with  weekly lawn mowing, but add lawn fertilization services as well.

To get started, identify your product offerings that pair well together, and train your team to identify unmet needs experienced by your customers. Develop language around offering solutions for those needs, while emphasizing a consultative, low-pressure sales technique. Finally, review the timeline for your customer engagements to best choose when to offer a complementary product: do you offer it when closing on an initial purchase, or later? Once you’ve organized your cross-selling process, monitor for customer satisfaction and revenue growth. Good luck!

6. Don’t be afraid to try upselling

Full article: Upselling

Upselling means offering your customers a premium version of what they're already buying. It's different from cross-selling (which we covered earlier) because instead of offering additional products, you're offering better versions of the same product. Whether it's a higher tier of service, a longer commitment period, or premium features, upselling can significantly increase your revenue per sale.

Premium offerings aren't about charging more for the same thing - they're about delivering more value and charging accordingly. Even price-sensitive customers will pay more for better results, faster delivery, or enhanced service. The key is communicating that value clearly.

When done properly, customers shouldn’t feel pressured by your upsell. Good upselling comes from understanding what your customers need and showing them how a premium option better meets those needs. If you focus on helping customers get better results, they'll appreciate the suggestion rather than feel pressured.

To get started, first review your current offerings and identify opportunities to add premium features or service levels. What do your best customers ask for? What challenges do they face that a premium offering could solve? Create clear tiers of service with specific benefits for each level. Then, train your team to spot opportunities where customers might benefit from premium options. Develop clear language around the value of each tier, focusing on outcomes rather than features. For example, instead of saying "our premium package includes priority support," say "with our premium package, we guarantee a 1-hour response time.”

Monitor your average sale value as you implement upselling. A well-executed upselling strategy typically increases average transaction value by 10-30%. And since you're selling to existing customers, these additional revenues usually come with higher profit margins than new customer acquisition.

Remember: the goal isn't to make every customer buy your premium offering. The goal is to make sure customers who would benefit from premium options know they're available. When done right, upselling helps your customers get better results while growing your revenue - a win-win for everyone involved.

7. Develop a referral program

Full article: Referral programs

Your existing customers represent your most powerful and cost-effective marketing channel. Every satisfied customer has a network of connections who likely face the same challenges and needs that drove them to your business in the first place. A well-designed referral program taps into these networks, turning happy customers into advocates who help grow your business.

The concept is straightforward: reward customers for introducing new business to your company. But the execution requires careful thought. The most successful referral programs make it easy for customers to participate while offering meaningful incentives to both parties, but poorly-planned programs can leave both parties feeling exploited and unappreciated.

The foundation of an effective referral program lies in three key elements. First, design your reward structure based on your margins and customer lifetime value. Most successful programs allocate 15-30% of a new customer's first-year revenue to referral rewards, depending on margins and the average lifetime value of a customer. This might seem generous, but referred customers typically deliver significantly higher lifetime value than those acquired through other channels, making the investment worthwhile.

Second, create seamless systems for tracking and fulfilling referrals. Whether you use specialized referral software or develop internal tracking procedures, your system needs to reliably attribute new business to the correct referrer and deliver rewards promptly. Clear documentation and consistent processes help avoid confusion and ensure your team handles referrals professionally.

Third, develop a promotion strategy that makes your program visible without being pushy. Start with your most satisfied customers, as they're most likely to participate. Integrate program information into your regular customer communications, and train your team to mention it at natural points in customer interactions. The goal is to make referrals feel like a natural extension of your customer relationship, not a desperate plea for business.

Monitor your program's performance through key metrics like customer participation rate and overall program ROI. Successful referral programs often see 3x-4x returns or higher, making them one of the most profitable ways to grow your business. Pay attention to both the quantity and quality of referrals - strong programs don't just generate new customers, they generate great customers who go on to refer others, creating a sustainable cycle of growth.

8. Offer subscriptions

Full article: Subscription-based revenue

Transforming your one-time sales into recurring revenue can create predictability and stability in your business growth. Subscription models change the traditional customer relationship from one-time transactions into an ongoing partnership, which often leads to higher customer lifetime value and more stable cash flow. For small businesses, this predictable revenue can make a significant difference in planning for growth and managing resources effectively.

Building successful subscription offerings requires structuring them to deliver additional and experienced value to your customers while maintaining profitability for your business. Once you’ve identified which products or services could be delivered on a recurring basis, narrow down the list to options that are more valuable to your customers if delivered regularly. Once you’ve done that, determine how you’re going to deliver and communicate the value consistently.

Critically, you want to avoid charging your customers for a subscription that they aren’t receiving any benefit from when you charge them. So a lawncare maintenance subscription should only be billed in months when lawns can be maintained, but a personal products delivery service could operate year-round. Resist the temptation to bill seasonal services on an annual basis: this creates a cycle of cancellations, which are expensive to manage and monitor.

When designing your subscription model, focus on creating clear, value-based tiers that align with different customer segments. Each tier should offer distinct benefits while remaining profitable for your business. Consider factors like service frequency, access levels, and additional perks that make the subscription valuable to customers. The pricing structure should be simple to understand but flexible enough to accommodate different customer needs.

To implement subscriptions successfully, start with a small test group of customers to gather feedback and refine your offering. Monitor key metrics like customer retention rates and monthly recurring revenue to gauge success. Remember that subscription models require excellent customer service and consistent value delivery to prevent cancellations. Many businesses find success in maintaining some traditional pricing options while introducing subscriptions, allowing for a gradual transition that minimizes risk while maximizing growth potential.

Remember that the goal isn't just to create recurring revenue – it's to build stronger, more valuable customer relationships. When done right, subscription models can transform sporadic customers into long-term partners, creating stability and predictability in your business growth while delivering ongoing value to your customers.

9. Make bundled offerings

Full article: Bundled offerings

Bundling your products or services together can increase your average transaction value while making it easier for customers to say "yes." When done right, bundles solve multiple related customer problems in a single purchase, creating more value than if the components were purchased separately. For small businesses, effective bundling can simplify your sales process, increase customer satisfaction, and increase average transaction size.

It’s important to remember that bundling isn’t about discounting - you aren’t merely reducing your prices in exchange for more work. Instead, bundling is about sharing efficiencies with your customers: it’s cheaper and easier for you to offer two services to one customer than it is to offer one service to two customers. Furthermore, the services should complement each other, making one another more impactful and effective for your customer and further adding value.

The key to successful bundling is identifying combinations that make natural sense to your customers. Look for products or services that customers often purchase together, or items that would work better together than separately. For example, a marketing agency might bundle strategy development with content creation and monthly reporting, or an IT provider might combine hardware, software, and support services into a complete technology solution. The goal is to create packages that solve related problems more effectively than individual purchases would.

When pricing your bundles, focus on creating clear value for the customer while protecting your margins. While bundles typically offer a modest discount compared to purchasing items separately (usually 10-20%), they should actually increase your profitability through higher purchase volumes and operational efficiencies. Don’t include your highest-margin items in bundles unless they substantially enhance the value proposition – you want your bundles to drive additional sales without cannibalizing your most profitable individual offerings.

Pay attention to both the composition and the pricing of your bundles – customers should immediately understand what's included and why the items work better together. Train your team to effectively communicate the value of your bundles, focusing on the complete solution rather than just listing the components. And as with all things, be sure to communicate the added value for your customer, centering their success in your sales efforts.

10. Create value-added services

Full article: Value-added services

Adding complementary services to your core offerings can create significant additional revenue while making your business more valuable to customers. Value-added services convert one-time transactions into comprehensive solutions that better serve customer needs and differentiate you from competitors. For small businesses, these additional services can improve customer retention, diversify revenue streams, and build stronger competitive advantages.

Successful value-added services address genuine customer needs rather than just creating additional revenue opportunities. A great place to start is with your collection of customer complaints and support tickets: where are they struggling with using or understanding your current products and services? Focus first on services that both complement your core offerings and can also be delivered without developing new business competencies or hiring new staff into new roles. You want this to be a seamless extension of your existing business, not an extra appendage you have to maintain.

When pricing value-added services, aim for margins that are higher than your core offering to justify the additional operational complexity. This higher profitability helps offset the resources required to develop and deliver the new services. However, be careful not to overprice – the combined cost of your core offering plus value-added services should still represent clear value to your customers.

Not only will this generate more revenue, but it will also support your customers’ success, driving higher customer satisfaction and greater long-term value for your customer. When done well, value-added services differentiate you in the market, deepen relationships with customers, and generate recurring business from loyal fans.

11. Form strategic partnerships

Full article: Strategic partnerships

Strategic partnerships combine your business's strengths with another company's capabilities to achieve growth neither could reach alone, allowing both to serve a broader customer base and capture more revenue per customer. Unlike casual referral relationships or vendor arrangements, strategic partnerships involve deeper integration and mutual commitment to shared success, often including formal agreements about how resources will be shared and benefits distributed. The best partnerships leverage complementary capabilities - for example, a marketing agency might partner with a web development firm to provide comprehensive digital solutions, or a plumber might partner with a carpenter to create a one-stop service offering to a homeowner.

You need to conduct a thorough evaluation of potential partners and align on clear objectives from the start. Look for partners whose values, culture, and business practices reflect your own, and focus on creating specific, measurable value for both organizations. Create detailed partnership frameworks that outline roles, responsibilities, and decision-making processes, including how profits will be shared and how conflicts will be resolved.

Remember that each partnership requires significant time and resources to manage effectively, so focus on quality over quantity. Start with one or two key partnerships and expand only when you have the capacity to maintain strong relationships with all partners. The goal isn't just to create more business opportunities – it's to build lasting relationships that create sustainable competitive advantages through unique combinations of resources and capabilities.11. Offer time-based promotions

12. Give volume discounts

Full article: Volume discounts

Volume discounts are about creating mutually-beneficial pricing: your customers save money while you gain bigger orders and steadier demand. Success depends on structuring them around your real cost savings, because there’s no point in giving away discounts if that added volume isn’t profitable for you.

Calculate your exact savings when customers buy more, from reduced handling costs to better inventory turnover to supplier discounts and incentives. Your discount levels should mirror these actual savings, not arbitrary price cuts. And be cautious when calculating these numbers: have a deep understanding of your variable costs versus fixed costs so you don’t inadvertently offer savings that you don’t actually receive.

Create clear, achievable tiers. Each step up needs enough savings to motivate larger purchases while maintaining your margins. Spell out the benefits plainly so customers grasp why buying more makes sense. Then train your team to explain these benefits in concrete terms - show customers how bulk buying cuts their long-term costs or ensures steady supply. Monitor your average order size and purchase frequency to refine your approach.

13. Invest in quality or feature improvements

Full article: Quality improvement

Premium prices need premium quality, and you can earn those premium prices by improving your products and services. Instead of focusing on superficial tweaks or marketing puffery, focus on solving real problems your customers face and adding value back into your customers’ lives with meaningful improvements to your offerings.

You can identify opportunities for improvement by analyzing your customers’ feedback. Study their complaints, support requests, and wish lists. Look for patterns pointing to common pain points you can fix. Choose improvements that strengthen your core offerings rather than scattered upgrades.

When you do make changes, make sure to tell people about them. Many businesses will invest in expensive upgrades to quality and capability and neglect to inform their would-be customers. You can’t make money on things you don’t sell, so include them in your marketing materials and educate your sales team on the benefits.

Track these changes through customer satisfaction scores, retention rates, and pricing power. These metrics reveal if you're moving in the right direction.

14. Host an event

Full article: Event marketing

Cold outreach is getting harder and harder in a digital era of AI-powered sales chat bots and email clutter. One-on-one conversations, however, still yield the best outcomes for sales outreach. Create opportunities to have these conversations by hosting events attended by your target customers. Both virtual and in-person gatherings create perfect settings for deepening customer relationships and showcasing your expertise.

When considering hosting an event, you need to start with understanding your goals. Are you attracting new customers, deepening relationships with existing customers, or spreading word in your community? Once you have your purpose, you can understand your audience: prospects, customers, referral partners, etc.

Design your event with the audience in mind so you can deliver genuine value. A workshop might educate customers on common industry challenges, while a networking event connects valuable partners with one another to deepen relationships.

The challenge with any event is promotion and attendance. Center attendee benefits in your communications: what will they learn, how will it better their lives or their business, and why should they attend? Treat the event like any other marketing campaign, with content, promotions, and attention directed toward getting attendees to register, even if the event is free. Finally, anticipate that approximately 60-70% of RSVPs will actually show up - even with the best follow-up communications, people get busy or deprioritize events seen as “optional.”

Measure success through attendance numbers, lead quality, and post-event sales. Strong events generate both immediate opportunities and long-term relationships.

15. Optimize your purchase cycle

Full article: Purchase cycle optimization

Every purchase process has points of friction. At one extreme, you have manual purchase orders hand-written on carbon copy paper in triplicate. At the other end, even punching in a credit card number and shipping address can reduce conversion and cost your business sales. Although it’s impossible to remove all friction from your purchase cycle, even small improvements can drive more sales and higher profitability.

The best place to start is with mapping your current purchase cycle, which is the portion of the Buyer’s Journey that starts at their intent to buy from you and ends at their successful purchase. Be especially mindful of stages where the customer has to make complex choices between several unique options and where the customer has to wait for a response from your business. These are both high-loss moments in any purchase cycle, and you want to eliminate them wherever possible.

You can further enhance your purchase cycle by integrating streamline reordering, automatic deliveries or subscriptions, and automated customer reminders. Any improvement that allows your existing customers to buy more of your products with less effort is mutually beneficial and improves your bottom line.

16. Implement CRM software

Full article: Customer relationship management (software)

A well-implemented CRM does more than just track customers through a sales pipeline. It transforms customer data into revenue growth through better engagement, optimized sales, and stronger relationships. Modern platforms go far beyond basic contact management to empower customized outreach, customer success management, and long-term relationships with your customers at scale.

When designed well, a CRM can deliver of relevant ads to a prospect, email former customers to remind them to restock with your products, remind website visitors to complete their purchases, send and monitor newsletters, prompt your sales team to reach out to stale leads, and even calculate and detect high-intent buyers so your sales team can target their outreach efforts more effectively - all without any manual input at all. A good CRM pays for itself many times over when used correctly.

To choose the right tool, pick a platform matching your business needs and team skills. Remember: the best CRM is the one you actually use. Although comprehensive systems with broad integrations can be appealing, complicated systems that people avoid using can severely diminish their benefit. Instead, look for a CRM that meets your foreseeable needs and matches an achievable skill level for your team. Strong reporting, easy automations, and low-stress rollouts are all critical to success for small businesses looking to start with a CRM. And don’t underinvest in implementation: a smooth launch is worth the cost.

17. Update your brand positioning

Full article: Brand position

A brand is an opinion: it’s the opinion people have about a business. People associate Nike with athleticism or Louis Vuitton with luxury fashion. But a brand position is how you intend to position your company’s brand in the minds of your customers relative to your competitors. Toyota and BMW both sell calls, but Toyota prioritizes affordability and reliability, whereas BMW prioritizes luxury and high performance. Different consumers will gravitate towards one over the other in large part because of their brand position.

It’s good to periodically review your brand position to make sure that your marketing, communication, service offerings, and prices match the expectations of your target market. It’s normal for these things to drift out of alignment periodically - sometimes for good reasons because of overall market movement, and sometimes because focus on brand consistency can slip. But too much unintentional change can damage your profit margins. If Toyota were to start marketing like a luxury brand, customers would start thinking their cars are unaffordable and not consider them. If BMW were to start offering cheaper vehicles, that could undermine the perception of their cars’ high performance engines.

A well-defended brand position improves revenue and profits. It gives you access to customers that other businesses’ brands have left behind, and it makes your company stand out among your competitors because consistently meeting expectations resonates with consumers. And don’t feel pressure to go up-market or be perceived as high-end or exclusive; Toyota earns far more revenue selling to the mid-market than BMW does selling upmarket products.

To get started with this, compare what your company offers relative to your competitors. Are you targeting the same audience or different audiences? Are you communicating similar benefits and features, or do you differentiate with benefits your competitors don’t touch? Have you carved out a portion of the market that your company can dominate, or are you just one of countless options? Assess reality, then make an intentional choice: are you going to dominate your niche, or are you going to find greener pastures elsewhere? Communicate your position at every touch point with customers: you advertising, your sales language, your product descriptions, your pricing, everywhere. Make it clear what opinion you want your customers to have of you, and align everything you can with meeting that expectation.

18. Plan for geographic expansion

Full article: Geographic expansion

Adding locations, routes, or territories is all about tapping into untapped groups of customers using your existing business model. Although it’s tempting to think in terms of better serving existing customers or spin-off concepts, when discussing geographic expansion, it’s a copy-paste exercise as you march across the map.

First, when you consider expanding into a new area, take stock of what is working with your existing model and who your customers are. Focus on bread-and-butter products or services: what makes up 60% or more of your base sales? For retailers, look at your highest-performing products. For home services, you might be looking at your most commonly-purchased service offerings. Within those product categories, who is buying frequently? Is it homeowners, or commuters, or tourists, or college students?

Once you understand what you sell and to whom you sell it, find an untapped market rich in those sales opportunities. If you’re a coffee shop selling grab-and-go coffee that is popular with commuters, find a location with commuters you don’t currently serve and offer the same popular product lines. If your landscaping service is popular with large-plot single-family homes, source neighborhoods not currently accessible by your routes and build infrastructure to service those households. Go to where you’ve found success before.

Many business owners make the mistake of adjusting too many variables when adding locations: they’ll switch from sit-down service to grab-and-go, or offer a premium line in an attempt to move up-market. Although some get lucky, this is a recipe for disaster: an untested product serving new customers is no different than starting a new business entirely, and carries the same risks. Focus on what works - innovation can come later.

Alternatively, some businesses try to increase convenience for existing customers, thinking the built-in customer base will add stability or increase purchase frequency. They might open a location close to where existing customers live, or break up routes to allow more scheduling flexibility for those customers. But all too often this just results in cannibalizing your own business, shifting revenue from your current operations to this additional operation with more overhead and more resource requirements. If your current customers are happy to buy from you the way things are now, resist the desire to change the status quo: the disruption is unlikely to be profitable.

19. Create a new product/service line

Full article: Product development

Whereas geographic expansion focuses on acquiring new customers with existing products and services, creating new products (often called “product innovation”) is a way to both sell more products to existing customers and to expand your potential customer base with new offerings.

When doing product development, focus primarily on your company’s existing strengths. If you have a robust manufacturing process, lean into that and consider line expansions or pack architecture when expanding your offerings - like adding colors or flavors, or offering smaller or larger multipacks of products. If you’re already offering deep expertise in a specific service offering, consider offering adjacent services that your customers would find valuable - like adding payroll alongside bookkeeping services, or teeth whitening along with routine dental exams.

Central to success with this approach is tapping into your customers’ perception of valuable offerings. Closely related to cross-selling, you want your customers to benefit from having a single source of products or services, rather than having to shop multiple providers to have all their needs met. Offerings that are too far removed from one another will fall flat: no one gets their teeth whitened by their bookkeeper, and no one wants payroll conducted by their dentist.

Once you launch the new offering, keep an eye on one particular performance metric: adoption rate. You want to make sure that your customers find value in the additional offering, especially if providing it creates more overhead. A low adoption rate isn’t necessarily a bad sign, however; it might indicate that you’ve tapped into a new customer audience entirely, which has its own benefits (and challenges) for your business.

20. Give purchase incentives

Full article: Purchase incentives

Everyone loves a coupon. Or at least, everyone should love a coupon. Obviously customers love them because they receive a discount. Businesses should love them, too, because they’re an effective way to capture market share from competitors and establish longer-term relationships with new customers who will purchase again in the future.

Many business owners perceive purchase incentives as “giving away” products or services in a way that is appealing only to discount-focused customers who only shop for the lowest price. But that isn’t true: purchase incentives give you the opportunity to “steal” customers from competitors, giving your business an opportunity to build and maintain a long-term relationship with that customer. It’s hard to get a buyer to convert from one brand or business to another, but purchase incentives are one of the most reliable ways to do it.

The principle applies across the customer spectrum, from grocery shoppers up through SaaS buyers. Any inducement to buy above and beyond the value proposition of the product itself can create sales where none would have otherwise existed. However, the success of this approach hinges on three elements: perceived value, timing, and relevance. Your incentive has to be valuable to the purchaser, obviously. It has to be made at the right time: too early in the purchase process and you’re giving away value for free; too late, and your incentive won’t change their mind. And it has to be relevant: including a couple of concert tickets with the purchase of an estate planning package is a nice gesture, but its irrelevance makes it look less like an incentive and more like a bribe.

21. Upgrade to premium packaging

Full article: Premiumization

Related to brand positioning, premiumization is the process of increasing the value of your product or service to justify higher-margin prices. One straightforward way to understand this idea (and, in fact, to do it) is to upgrade your packaging.

A high-quality product package is a cheap way to make a product feel more exclusive. Apple pioneered this approach in consumer electronics, making the routine act of unpacking their laptops and iPods into a premium experience that spoke to the quality of their products. To this day, many of Apple’s competitors have followed them into this approach, from Google to Sony, investing in heavier card stock, minimalist printing, and sequence design.

The same concept can be applied to any business. A residential pest control company can increase its perceived value by wrapping its vehicles and requiring its technicians to wear clean, branded uniforms. A law firm can send the final versions of contracts on high-quality paper enclosed in branded folders. Even prior to closing a customer, a marketing agency can invest in technology to support its sales experience, using premium video conferencing software and high-quality cameras and microphones to convey an image of professionalism and competence.

Premiumization is only successful if your customers value a premium offering - meaning either they’ll pay more, or they’re more likely to choose you over a competitor because of it. And perhaps just as important, your business needs to deliver a premium offering that aligns with the perception. After all, it doesn’t matter how on-brand your trucks and uniforms are if you can’t get a spider infestation under control. Premium packaging can only support a premium reality.

22. Identify a new target customer segment

Full article: Market development

Similar to geographic expansion, targeting a new customer segment drives revenue growth by delivering the same products or services to a segment currently not served by your existing business model. Unlike geographic expansion, this approach tends to be much less risky, as it doesn’t often require much additional overhead or investment. Instead, the focus is on identifying similar customer segment to the one you already service, then providing what you already sell to those new customers.

A great example of this process is expanding a consumer-focused product or service to also include business customers as well. For example, if you’re a remodeling company serving residential customers looking to refresh their kitchens and bathrooms, you might consider offering similar services to businesses as well. Or you might currently sell a product directly to consumers, but could easily add wholesale options for retailers looking to sell your product themselves.

To get started, focus on the pain points that your current business model solves for your customers. Once you have that list, use it to identify additional customer segments that might have the same (or similar) pain points - a business might not need a kitchen remodel, but it might need a new kitchenette in its expanded office space, or even plumbing and carpentry for a new distribution center. Alternatively, look for additional pain points that your business could solve for other customer segments: instead of one-off custom kitchen design, a property developer might need an entire building worth of identical kitchens remodeled in the coming years, and would benefit from your know-how, access to suppliers, and materials warehousing.

Smart market development leverages existing capabilities for new customers. Resist the temptation to expand offerings for a new market - that’s innovation, and that’s a high-risk growth strategy for most small businesses. Instead, focus on what you do well, identify who else would benefit from your work, and start reaching out to that audience.

23. Develop streamlined reordering

Full article: Order automation

Any way you can increase predictability and reduce friction in your purchase process will inevitably lead to more sales and more revenue for your business. Streamlined re-ordering - can drive substantial additional revenue without the added cost of new customer acquisition.

The most straightforward approach is to utilize one-click reordering through an automated reminder system, probably through email. Calculate the normal consumption rate for your product for typical consumers (or, ideally, track it for individual consumers), and start your reminder outreach a few days prior to their re-order event. Provide custom links to an already-stocked online shopping cart of the chosen product, and give your customer a simplified checkout experience that auto-populates their order information as completely as possible. Remember: the fewer clicks they need to make, the more likely they are to complete the purchase.

Critically, this is not the time for upselling or cross-selling unless it’s already integrated into your checkout process and working well. You don’t want to sacrifice a small, nearly-guaranteed sale in the pursuit of a larger one. It’s easy for customers to feel like you’re just trying to squeeze more money out of them. Instead, the reordering process should focus entirely on the customer’s convenience - at every step, you want it to feel like you’re doing them a favor and trying to be helpful. So don’t include unrequested products in their checkout cart or use pop-ups to suggest additional products on top of what they already have.

For more analog service providers, “reordering” can be as simple as a reminder phone call from a sales rep or even a follow-up appointment scheduled at the end of their current appointment. The latter is routine at dental offices: patients schedule their next 6-month check-up before leaving the clinic. This practice reduces missed appointments, increases utilization, and provides better health outcomes for patients as well.

24. Provide expert consultation

Full article: Consultative sales

Most people have a negative opinion of sales and salespeople, and for good reason: the process can feel adversarial, duplicitous, and risky, with buyers feeling at odds with more knowledgeable and skilled experts. But it doesn’t have to be that way; by using a consultative sales approach that prioritizes customer success, your sales team can become an extension of your customer success operations, and even contribute positively to the overall customer experience. This drives customer satisfaction, perceived value, and ultimately higher sales rates than most alternative sales methodologies.

Good consultative selling converts sales meetings into collaborative problem-solving exercises. Rather than beginning with a product or service that needs to be sold, consultative salespeople start with the prospect’s priorities, mutually exploring and discovering needs and opportunities for improving the status quo for the would-be customer. In an ideal world, those needs and problems can be solved by the salesperson’s product or service, creating a true win-win scenario. But if not, truly consultative sales ends with the customer feeling cared for and more knowledgeable about their needs, even if they didn’t decide to buy.

To assess the success of consultative selling, the process needs to be structured and tracked like any other sales process. Conversion rates, time to close, and other performance metrics are still important. But rather than marking unsuccessful efforts as “lost” and moving on, sales opportunities should be debriefed, with an analysis of why and how the business failed to meet the customer’s needs. This gives the business an opportunity to expand its offerings, change its messaging to better align with expectations, and improve its sales operations so that customer needs are better met in the future.

Training a team on consultative selling requires some expertise in the methodology. A lot of sales techniques (both traditional and modern) rely on creating “feature-preachers,” where salespeople race to identify customer needs and match those needs with product features. This fails to build adequate trust in the mind of the buyer, undermining the sales process and positioning more consultative competitors to win the business. Before embarking on changing your sales process, consider hiring a sales consultant with experience in this approach to advise you on best practices and map out an implementation plan.

25. Invest in customer experience design

Full article: Customer experience

Every customer touchpoint - from the first ad they see to consuming the product or offboarding from the service - contributes to the customer’s perception of your company and the value of what it offers. By mapping and analyzing the entire length of that experience, you can uncover opportunities to add value for your customer, change their perception of your business, and ultimately be more willing and more likely to buy from you now and in the future.

If you’ve never mapped your customer experience before, start at a high level. List every step of customer engagement, from beginning to end. Then, starting at the end, move backwards through the process, identifying potential points of friction, unmet expectations, or missed opportunities to increase value and deepen the relationship. Create specific solutions for each item (in a way that doesn’t significantly change your operations or divert the customer journey). Prioritize this list in a way that allows for easy, short-term wins, while planning to tackle larger improvements over time.

The most common gap that most small businesses expose in this process is a communication gap: they aren’t providing the customer with enough information or transparency about the relationship with the business or the process being followed. Newsletters, email sequences, and even upfront expectations management can solve a lot of these early-stage challenges, dramatically improving the customer experience and driving additional value.

Bonus: Partner with revenue strategy experts

There are countless ways to increase revenue for a small business. This list only contains 25. As you’ve likely noticed, they aren’t all applicable to every type of business, and in fact every individual business is unique in how it operates and how it can be improved.

If you’re serious about increasing your revenue this year, partner with an experienced revenue strategy expert like Entrefy. Our focused expertise will help you quickly identify and prioritize the most impactful strategies to improve your revenue without wasting time, money, and effort chasing solutions that won’t work for your business.

Work with a partner that offer both guidance and hands-on support. Developing and implementing a growth strategy takes time, and as a busy owner, time is your most precious resource. You should work with a firm that does more than just sell you an opinion: they should work within your business, alongside your team and other vendors, managing projects and driving results.

Entrefy’s clients typically see 20% or more year-on-year revenue growth. If you’d like to learn more or find out if your business is the type that we can support, you can schedule an informational meeting here with one of our growth experts.

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Remember, successful implementation of these strategies requires careful planning and systematic execution. Choose the approaches that best align with your business model and customer needs, then develop detailed implementation plans for each initiative. And best wishes for a successful year of growth in 2025!