If you have been following me, you have most likely heard me mention revenue-generating tasks. These tasks are vital to the success of your business but can be challenging to prioritize. Today, I'm going to give you some tips on how you can prioritize your revenue-generating tasks.

The first thing you need to understand is the difference between revenue-generating tasks and non-revenue generating tasks.

Non-revenue generating tasks consist of actions vital to your business's operation and must be completed but do not directly drive revenue. Think about when you pay invoices, review financial statements, check inventory, improve customer service measures, manage employee matters, develop operational procedures, etc. These are all necessary and essential actions, but they do not drive revenue.

Some examples of revenue-generating tasks include sales (selling your product or service), generating sales proposals, product/service delivery, marketing development, customer lead generation, and follow-up with interested prospects, etc. All of these actions can help your business earn revenue.

Now that we have separated the revenue-generating tasks from the non-revenue generating tasks let's go back to the question: how do we prioritize them?

I’m a big believer in simplifying things whenever possible. Obviously, it's essential to generate revenue for your business to succeed, but that needs to be balanced with fostering a pipeline for future sales. Here are some of my recommendations on how you can do that.

• Focus on low-hanging fruit first. If you have customers ready to buy, concentrate on meeting their needs and fulfilling their order requirements. Make the sale right in front of you, and then deliver the product or service the customer paid for (and do it well).
• Generate sales proposals and send them out to the prospects quickly. When a prospect expresses interest in your product or service, provide them with the information they need to make an informed decision as quickly as possible. In this day and age, people expect a quick response, and making them wait could result in lost sales and negative PR.
• Work on marketing development and lead generation so that you continue to build your brand and add prospects to your sales pipeline consistently.
• Equally important is to focus your attention on promoting your most profitable products or services. Revenue generation is essential, but it won't have the desired impact on your bottom line without maximizing your profitability.

If you don't know your most profitable product or service, you need to figure it out fast. Businesses need to track and understand where their profits are coming from. As a business owner myself, I know exactly what my most profitable service offering is, and I build everything else I do around that. This is also something I help my clients do.

There’s definitely a lot more to revenue-generating tasks, but this is a good starting point. I’ve worked with thousands of businesses to help them put a system in place so they can prioritize their revenue-generating tasks. If you are still struggling with this and would like some help or just want to talk, I’d love to help. You can email me at kent@kentgustafson.com.