It simply amazes me, when business people tell me they want to increase income, yet they cannot identify each existing income stream nor how it flows or is blocked.
Picture a small stream working its way down through the mountains, rippling joyously over the rocks and pebbles in its path. Flashes of sunlight that manage to invade the forest canopy are cast in a hundred directions from the ripples on the surface of the stream. Further down the mountainside, the stream converges with another and become a rivulet that cuts its way down to the valley a thousand feet below. On the other side of the valley, another streams path has a bolder in the way, and the stream splits into two, each now heading in a different direction, each weaker than the original. One creates a small pond on the hillside, and the lip of this pond eventually spills out across the surrounding land and is absorbed back into the soil plus evaporates into the sky. The other manages to navigate the hillside and join with the rivulet just before it reaches the valley floor.
Time passes. An industrious man comes along and puts in a dam halfway up the valley. The rivulet gradually fills the dam. The stream that once joined the rivulet is now the only source of water that flows uninterrupted to the floor of the valley and out into the plain below. However, this water supply is no longer enough to sustain the valley floor and plain, and hard times follow, and the plain becomes a barren desert.
And that is why the Acme Furniture company went bankrupt. Someone (industrious man) came along and stole their market share (put a dam upstream from them and collected all their water).
In the analogy above, the streams are composed of Buyers and potential Buyers. The ones that arrive at your business door (and to whom you manage to sell to) have a history that includes lots of different things that are all valuable to you in business.
If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you will have some customers. You need to find out from these customers as much information as possible so that you have a chance to map your business mountainsides and put you in a position to allow you to be the dam builder or to channel the streams past the boulders and directly into your business. (If you are just starting out in business, do it right the first time and collect this information from every customer from day one).
How? It all starts with data collection, progresses with data analysis and ends with marketing adjustments. Then you keep cycling this around and around and around.
As part of the sales process, you need to collect demographic information from your customers, as much as possible. I have given some ideas for this to get you started, but please don’t limit your data collection to just these points. The purpose is to provide as many different points as possible so that you can search for common threads among the income streams.
Buyers come from somewhere, and often from different places.
1. Where does your buyer live?
2. Where does your buyer work?
3. How did they find their way to your door?
4. Why do they need or want your product?
5. Is there purchase fulfilling a business, personal, family or other need?
6. How often does this customer buy this product from you? Or from others?
7. Are there other buyers that this buyer knows that are looking for the same product or service?
8. Were there other chances to buy along the way, but the buyer still chose you? If so, what made the buyer notice the upstream choices? And what made the buyer continue downstream to you?
For example, imagine a person gets a promotion but has to move to a new town. When she arrives, she finds a Real Estate Agent to help her find a place to settle. Is the series of questions above going to put the Agent into a good position to capitalize on other people from her company that may also be relocating? Could the answer to number 3 above provide a chance to work upstream? In this case it may have been a referral channel that was used or the home office uses a particular Real Estate Agency that has a link to this local agent.
The point is, if you don’t collect this type of information, you have little chance of using it to your advantage. When you do collect and analyse this information, you can spend your marketing dollars in the best possible areas (channel the stream to you). You may also find from this information that it makes sense to go build a dam (open a branch office or similar).
Buyers buy different products for different reasons at different times.
1. Has this buyer bought other products from your company? (If you have been collecting and storing this information for a while, you can extract this information from the files - either electronic or paper versions).
2. Has this buyer bought your product from your competitors?
3. Has this buyer bought your product from one of your other branches?
4. Why did the person buy the product? (To fill an immediate need, to have a spare, to fulfil another contingency need?)
5. Was the product purchased for the buyer or someone else? (For themselves, for the boss, for the wife or kids?)
6. Is this purchase determined by time? (To use remaining budget, repetitive timed purchase, to take advantage of seasonal specials?)
Knowing the above information can help you adjust your marketing spend to capitalize on the seasons or the reasons. You can also forecast your warehousing needs (it that fits your business) and optimise space utilization.
Buyers often have recommenders that influence their buying decisions.
1. Did anyone recommend this product or service to the buyer?
2. Did anyone deter them from buying a competitors product?
3. How would you classify the recommender? (Boss, Peer, Opinion Leader, Subordinate, Business Contact, Family, Friend, Spouse, Child,Other?)
4. Has the buyer heard good reports about your product? Your company?
You? (as a sales or business person)? If so, from whom exactly, and in what way? (Good reports in the media, in general conversation, as part of a deliberate buying analysis/search?)
Collecting and analyzing the above information can give you enough insight to be able to influence the snow melters themselves, and help get the streams pointed in your direction from the outset.
Your company has different products, and different product options.
Your sales records should give you all the information you would possibly desire about:
• Which buyer bought which product and when.
• What Options they purchased and at when they purchased those options.
• What repeat purchases were made and the duration between repeat sales for that product.
Armed with that data, analysis will show you the patterns that tell you when to direct market to your existing clients for repeat sales.
It may also tell you which options can be moved up to be sold with the original purchase (because the time between original purchase and option purchase is so small).
Cross-referencing the information from the above four broad areas can provide ways for you to fully capitalize on your market landscape and bring the streams to your door. In the simplest of terms, alignment of the correct products within the correct streams removes barriers to sales and increases income flow into the organisation.
Conclusive Conclusion:
To maximise your income potential takes work. Analysis of the income streams of your business is smart work that can produce significant results. In a competitive environment, it can mean the difference between prosperity and barren wastelands.
What streams will you map today? | 
