1. Increase your number of clients. This is where almost every entrepreneur or small business looks first, but it really is the hardest, most expensive and most time consuming way to boost the bottom line. Many people are convinced it’s worth meeting with everyone—"because you never know…."

While trying to make proposals to everyone is great, very few of us have the time to it. By qualifying prospects we can have the most impact for our investment of time and effort. Author Michael Port in his book "Book Yourself Solid" calls it the Red Velvet Rope Policy. Creating a red velvet rope policy saves both you and the potential client time and headaches. If you are not the right one for them why waste their time.

Choose your ideal customer. Make a list of the type of people or businesses with whom you do your best work—those clients that inspire you—and then keep that ideal client list forefront when talking to potential customers.

2. Increase the number of times clients buy from your company. Offer existing clients new opportunities to continue their relationship with you. Many business consultants call this the sales funnel.

The idea of a sales funnel created the wrong impression in my mind when I first learned of this concept. When I considered the graphic of a funnel, the first thing that entered my mind was the poor client being "flushed away"—certainly not a good way to visualize your clients. I prefer to think of it as a triangle, I call it the Sales Summit —a gentle little climb up to the sale or in Internet marketing your premium offer.

There is a difference between a traditional sales summit and the Internet sales summit.

3. Increase the dollar amount of each sale. This one is pretty self- explanatory. Offer discounts and bonuses for larger sales and just like the grocery store entices you at the check-out line, consider add-ons, up-sells and premium offers at check out. Have you been to amazon.com lately? They are experts in the up-sell—the sections titled “We have recommendations for you” and “What others who have purchased ‘X’ have also purchased ‘Y’” are great examples of up-selling. Yes, that type of up-selling takes a great deal of sophisticated computer programming, however taking a lesson from them and offering one up-sell or bonus to everyone at checkout can easily be done in most of today’s shopping cart software programs.

And the best value for your time and money in boosting your bottom line is:

4. Give your current customers confidence with excellent customer service. When you hear of a concern, address it within a reasonable amount of time—no more than 48 hours. Be specific with what you can do and when it will get done, then do it on time. Be reliable.

Excellent customer service is a guaranteed way to improve a company’s bottom line—a customer with confidence is a customer for life.