There are millions of products available in the market today. The ability to add new products is crucial if you want to keep up and add profitability to your business. In fact, supporting and embarking on new product development is never an option that organizations should forego. They are, anyway, the core of all businesses. Without them, companies wouldn’t be able to earn money.
Undertaking the development process, however, is risky. Companies should organize and plan them duly and diligently. If you really want to add profitability to your business, there is still another option. You can develop new services.
In a way, you’ll be transforming your business into a service-oriented organization. You may need to consider using some business transformation consulting solutions to help you get through this phase. In general, however, there are ways to add services to your company and increase your profitability. This article aims to help you understand these strategies that you can apply to your business.
Plan Ahead to Prepare for the Unexpected
Lack of planning when developing a new service to add to your company’s offerings can be risky for your business. You could invest money in the development, but if you failed to launch your new service successfully, that could mean a loss in returns. Planning allows you to adjust to the changes, whether it’s positive or negative. More importantly, it can prepare you for anything unexpected.
When creating a plan, there are factors to consider. However, they vary for each business and the type of service they want to offer. In general, they are a combination of marketing, pricing, sales process, qualified staff, and project management factors.
Obviously, you have to market your new service. However, you need to consider if it’s actually something that your customers would want or need. In other words, there should be a demand for it. The service you’re about to offer should be answering a specific need. An effective plan can ensure that you’re answering a demand for a service you’re planning to start.
Of course, you also need to figure out how much you’re going to charge for your new service. If it’s something new, you need to consider how much you’ve spent to develop it. If it’s something that’s been offered before by others, you can compare prices.
You also have to consider the staff you’ll need to deliver your new service. Do you need experts to deliver it? Is your current team willing to go through training to become experts with this new service? Should you hire subject matter experts (SMEs) instead? Who exactly is going to provide this service? You have to ask yourself these questions.
Having a project manager can also help you deliver your new service to your customers. However, you have to consider if you should hire one or do the management yourself. You have to consider who’ll manage and supervise the delivery of your new service on budget, on time, and on scope.
Finally, you need a sales process to determine how to offer your new service to your customers. You may need to tie this up with your marketing plan.
Match Products and Services
According to the industry leader in providing B2B information, Channel Futures, selling services offers three benefits: it modernizes a company’s go-to-market approach, increases its margins, and provides additional revenue. Despite knowing this, many retail businesses choose to look the other way around. Apparently, selling services isn’t a priority for them.
Channel Futures believes one of the reasons for this is that companies are concerned that selling services may affect the sales of their products. However, Channel Futures suggest matching products with services is an excellent strategy to add a new income stream for any business.
You can apply this strategy to your business. Develop services that can be matched with your products. For example, if you’re selling apparel, why not offer alteration services? If you’re selling smartphone accessories, why not provide installation services?
Terminate Poor-performing Services
It may sound negative, but according to Inc. magazine, you can’t increase your company’s profitability, even if you add new services if you don’t stop offering services that are performing poorly. They take up too many resources, time, and effort, which should have been allotted to your high-performing services.
You Give Some; You Earn Some
While offering services isn’t always an option that businesses think would add income to their business, it remains one of the best ways to increase profitability for any company. It could positively transform a business, which, according to Inc., is a great way to show customers that your business is scaling up and increasing customer satisfaction and retention. In other words, it’s a win-win situation. You’re giving more, but you’re also getting more. Offer new services to increase the profitability of your business today.