For SMEs, standing out from the crowd is a difficult thing to do. With not enough hours in the day or manpower on the ground, there’s a lot of pressure.
At Hopewiser, an SME ourselves, we understand the challenges of growing a business.
We are a success story that has been thriving for over 40 years so we thought we would put together a few key steps in order to help you prosper in the business world.
Take a Look at Your Sales Pipeline
One of the key aspects we have found to help make us prosperous and profitable is to keep delving into your Sales pipeline.
Your Sales processes will consist of a series of steps that a prospect goes through on the way to becoming a customer.
By taking a close look at the stages involved, you can:
- Define where your best contacts come from
- What triggers their decision to do business with you
- How you can incentivise the process
- What needs to happen to close a deal
- How you can encourage repeat business
You also need to focus on customer retention: it’s generally accepted that the cost of retaining existing customers is less than sourcing new ones.
If that’s your experience, then giving thought to the right strategy to attract and retain customers must be a business priority.
To acquire growth and retain customers you need to make sure that you stand above your competitors. One way to do this is to give the very best service.
For many of us the first point of contact is crucial.
We need to make sure that we have our customer’s details captured and stored correctly.
Whether you are a major Utility provider or an online flower seller, having your customer’s correct name and address stored is paramount to the success of the business.
With incorrect details, not only will business analytics be useless, but the services you provide will not go to the right place at the right time.
According to Ofcom, following an audit of the Royal Mail, the number of complaints in 2017 rose by 3%.
Plus according to Royal Mail’s top ten complaint categories, Lost Items was the top one at 28.5%.
Evaluate Overheads
It’s also a good idea to review your business overheads from time to time.
Although every business person understands you must spend money to make money, overheads can become a significant drain on the bottom line.
It is recommended to regularly evaluate your overheads and look at potential savings across the board.
Again, you can relate this back to accurate data.
Lost revenue, mis-delivered mail, poor return on investment for marketing activity, bad business analysis will all come down to inaccurate data.
It is essential you check your data against files that tell you who has died and who has moved. Like the Deceased and Movers datasets.
For example in England and Wales in 2024, there were about 594,000 deaths and 1.2 million home movers.
Marketing to the wrong address is bad for customer relationships and could ultimately impact your revenue.
Technology
For an SME, investing in new technology can be a very expensive option.
Outsourcing can be easier with the added benefit of external expertise, coupled with the fact that as an SME you don’t have to train staff.
To access, clean and accurate address data, the latest service in the market is Data Cleansing, which allows a user to upload spreadsheets and databases securely into an online solution.
Skills Gaps
Not having the requisite skills, qualifications, and experience can have a major effect on productivity and profitability, which is another case for using online self service providers for Data Cleansing.
Some companies may not have access to up-to-date suppression files which means they run the risk of mailing to deceased persons or those that have moved house.
At Hopewiser we have an array of suppressions available to our clients to ensure that their records are accurate and verified.
For example, The NDR National Deceased Register and the GAS Goneaway Suppression.
In 2021, a UK energy company sent a bill to a deceased customer, threatening disconnection if payment wasn’t made – even though the company had already been notified of the death.
The letter was addressed directly to the deceased and caused significant distress to the family, prompting public criticism and a formal apology from the provider.
This is a prime example of bad data equalling bad customer service.
We hope that you have found this guide useful and that you can take some tips away to improve your staff and grow your business.
For all your data enquiries, whether that be our Data Cleansing service to de-dupe, verify, and enhance your company records, or an accurate address lookup service for your website, get in touch with the address experts.
, updated 2nd July 2025.
