Ten Ways to Generate Short-Term Revenue to Fuel Long-Term Growth

Marketing consultants stress the need for long-term planning, five years or more into the future. But a question we frequently get is, "How do I make it to the long term without short-term revenue?" The answer is to create a series of short-term wins that together lead to positive long-term success. Here are Ten Ways to Generate Short-Term Revenue to Fuel Long-Term Growth.

1. Create a business model that builds stable and profitable growth from several different sources (retail sales, non-retail sales, consulting, seminars) and recognizes the difference between maximizing vs. optimizing sales, revenue, and profits.
2. Write a rolling, multi-year business plan with realistic and specific objectives. Describe what to do a well as when and how you will accomplish your goals.
3. Establish a steadily growing base of cash flow on which you can count as regular income. This could be built through actions over which you have most control, such as speaking, conducting seminars or consulting.
4. Reinvest in your business to increase growth, and in your employees to reward success.
5. Recognize that some promotion generates exposure (media appearances, social networking) and other stimulates sales (direct marketing).
6. Understand that promotion has impact on sales in the short term (trade sales or through non-bookstore retailers) or long-term (personal selling to corporate buyers).
7. Stop selling your books. Instead, think of how you can sell your content in the form most desired by your target readers and buyers (printed books, ebooks, audio books, booklets, seminars, webinars).
8. Apply strategic thinking to adjust your product list, promotional effectiveness and efficiency, and growth from your core business to exploit changing markets, readers, and buyers.
9. Create a Board of Directors in the form of a mastermind group of dissimilar, positive thinkers who meet regularly to seek creative ways to stimulate growth in response to the changing business environment.
10. Grow personally by reading stimulating and informative material from a variety of sources, attending conferences, testing new ideas, asking yourself, "What's next?" and always thinking, "What's the best use of my time right now?"