Start the New Year with New Revenues

As we've seen throughout 2009, our current economic climate has encouraged organizations to get creative. In my program The Profit Wrangler: Wrangling New Profits from Existing Assets, organizations identify their Golden Nuggets and the Action Lassos they need to generate new revenue streams. Golden Nuggets are the assets within an organization that have the potential to realize revenue for the organization. Many organizations develop process and acquire assets during the course of doing business every day and don't even realize it. They develop a new system or hire a specialized group of people to fill an immediate need. Without realizing it, they have uncovered Golden Nuggets. Until someone helps them mine and refine the discovery, the organization might never tap into these profit centers.

All organizations possess one or more of six Golden Nuggets:

• Products. Most folks think of products when they think of assets. They look at the inventory they have on hand and think about how to move those products and turn them into dollars. What companies overlook is using those products in ways not outlined in their business plans. As the market changes, a company has to be ready to think of new ways to leverage the products that they create or have in inventory. Through new uses, existing products can bring in dollars from new market segments.
  
• Services. Services are another part that folks don't always think of as a potential revenue source. Of course, service-based businesses have a core service that they provide for a fee. There might also be ways that product-based businesses can replicate their customer service or fulfillment system for other manufacturers. Or a service business might have value-added services that they have previously offered for free or almost intuitively. Those additional services can be transformed into a new source of revenue for an enterprising organization.
  
• Talent. Many organizations attract a very specific talent pool. This talent either fits with their culture or they possess unique skills and ways of thinking that apply specifically to their product or service offering. That group of highly specialized architects might be able to leverage their skills to do more than design assisted living facilities. They might be able to serve as consultants to design firms without that level of expertise. They might also directly advise existing assisted living facilities to realize new ways to translate their skills into organizational revenue.
  
• Processes. What distinguishes a business from a hobby is the development of replicable, transferrable systems and processes. All organizations have processes that they use to deliver on services and give themselves an edge over their competition. When times get tough, sharing the secret sauce (for a fee, of course) can provide a platform for clients and competitors to do it themselves and minimize additional investments in human resources for sustained growth.
  
• Capital (Real and Financial). Capital can be easy to measure, since it usually takes on the form of a physical item or a balance in an account. When that item is not being used or that account balance is not gaining interest, it is being underutilized. This goes beyond subleasing unused office space. Organizations can change how they invest their financial capital and use physical assets by getting creative and creating their own microcosms of capital outsourcing.The costs to access this capital, either as a lease, loan, or other use fee, can create new ways for an organization to bring new wealth to stagnant resources.
  
• Intellectual Property (IP). IP is the most often overlooked Golden Nugget within most organizations. When I surveyed an audience of diverse small business, nonprofit, and corporate leaders, only 15% had heard the term "IP". Like processes, content and information can be leveraged for a cost. If an organization is known as the leader in providing information, content, and resources in an area, most likely, folks will pay for structured access. It saves them time and resources, and the organization has created a new level for demand to help fuel its future endeavors.
  

I constantly refer to "organizations' in this article because these tenets are not just for businesses. Nonprofits, governments, and chambers of commerce can tap into their Golden Nuggets to offset a potential drop in tax revenue, membership, and donations as their stakeholders go into survival mode. On our web site, we have two examples of organizations who are leveraging their Golden Nuggets to generate new revenue streams: a nonprofit research organization and a for-profit financial services organization. Each is leveraging its services, talent, and processes to help member organizations gain access to the resources it needs.

Wrangling new profits from existing assets does not require years of strategic planning and a 10-year rollout plan. You might already have Golden Nuggets like under served talent, fallow capital, unharnessed IP, unique processes, intuitive services, and multipurpose products available within your organization. By getting a little creative, you can start developing new revenue streams from what you already have. Don't let this inspirational period in our economic history go to waste.