So what are they? The three ways to grow a business?
When you distil it down to the basics there are only three ways you can grow any business. But 98% of business owners focus on one of the three ways…
First: Increasing the number of customers
This is the first dimension and the hardest, most expensive and time consuming strategy to grow your business. If I asked you what the cost of acquiring a new client is, what would your answer be?
If I asked you to compare that to the cost of selling more to your existing customers, I’m guessing it would be negligible by comparison.
Do you think you could increase your revenue without focusing only on getting new customers?
Let’s do the math. You’ve got 1,000 customers and each one spends £250 with you once a year, your annual revenue is £250k. Let’s say you want to double your revenue to £500k.
Where do you focus your attention?
98% of business owners would focus on doubling the number of customers. It’ll take ages to find 250 prospects, get them to know-like-trust you, it’d be expensive to acquire them and pretty demanding on your time and effort and that’s before they’ve converted.
It’s a scary thought isn’t it, doubling your business means doubling the number of customers 😳
The Second: increase your average transaction value
What if you could double the value of every sale? There are loads of ways you can do that, it takes far less effort and time and won’t cost you anything. The thing with pricing is that we often don’t raise our prices because of fear, our own fears.
When was the last time you reviewed your prices? What’s holding you back?
If I can share one takeaway with you it's this: your perception of your price is not your customer's perception of value. Let that sink in a moment.
The third: increase your frequency of purchase
If you could get your customers to come back again you wouldn’t need to focus on finding new customers to double your revenue. Again there are loads of ways to do this and it doesn’t cost much to set up at all. In fact many times and in many circumstances it can be automated and you can make money while you sleep as they say.
Grow your customers x grow the average spend x grow the number of purchases.
The great secret is to work on all three ways simultaneously
Let’s go back to our example. 25% more customers would be 1,250 customers spending 25% more at £312.50 and 25% more often. If my maths doesn’t fail me thats £978,000 in annual revenue.
What if you had a 10/10/10 plan or a 20/20/20 plan? What would the impact be on your revenue? Get the geometric growth worksheet here to sit down and work out your numbers.
Growing your new customer base by 25% is far more manageable and far less daunting and still near enough doubles your business.
Geometric business growth is right there for the taking, it can be quick and easy. Let me leave you with some questions to ponder, because the quality of our questions is directly related to the quality of our results!
• What are the top three things you do that get you your best results?
• What is your cost of client acquisition?
• What could you do now to bring in 25% more customers?
• What could you do to add more value and create an offer for a 25% higher spend?
• How could you encourage your customers to spend with you more often?
I hope you spend your 90 minutes doing the numbers on the worksheet and thinking about the questions. Geometric business growth is closer than you think.
The 3% rule holding you back
Now that you have a picture of geometric business growth, let’s talk about the 3% margin holding back you.
THIS IS the biggest factor that determines success in business.
If I asked you what that X factor was for you, what would you say?
How great your product is, the quality of your service, your people, maybe word of mouth or your brand. I hear those sorts of things all the time, they are important things but they’re not THE X factor.
Once you know what it is you can quickly move your business from competing with the masses to absolute market domination. Get on with it Sian, tell me what it is. Ok, are you ready?
We're in this for the long haul, I'd grab a coffee if I were you. Let's do this ☕️
The one factor of success, the X factor is this:
How easy it is to do business with you
Let me explain... Only 3% of sales happen straight away. Hold onto that thought a moment.
In my book '29 Ways to Get Sales’ in #10 I talk about how only a tiny percentage of your audience are ready to buy from you right now. That tiny percentage of people ready to part with their hard earned cash for what you’ve got is about 3%. I even drew a little picture to show you the triangle (which if you flip upside down is your sales funnel).
It can take a long time to move buyers from knowing you or your product to liking you or your brand to trusting you and becoming a raving fan customer. The know-like-trust journey could be fairly accelerated for low ticket or consumable products but it can also be weeks or months for high ticket or consultancy and service based businesses.
The longest I’ve ever had from knowing someone to finally working with them was nine years. Crazy right!
Let’s talk about the 3% ready to buy…
If one of them came across your business today and decided to take action, how easy is it for them to buy from you right now? Is everything easy, slick and so good that they’ll definitely buy, probably buy again and recommend you to the next person?
Let me ask you a few more questions…
What if instead of weeks and months to get your audience to know-like-trust you often with no result, you could half that time?
What if you doubled maybe even tripled the number of people who actually take you up on your offer?
Optimising your sales funnel and increasing your conversion rates are totally possible and if you did both, would it not have an instant impact on your business? 🔥🔥🔥
Your success X factor is making sure it’s as easy as possible to do business with you.
Are you ready for some takeaways?
Identify any leaks in your sales funnel. Where are people dropping off? (It could be as simple as adding a web chat facility or making sure your phones are answered!)
Make it easier for people to know-like-trust you. Remember if only 3% of people are ready to buy from you when they hit your website, what can you offer them now to get them in your funnel and build a relationship? Clue - it’s email marketing!
Make sure your products or services are clear, easy and that the pricing is so transparent it’s more a decision of which one to take not should I take it. Make an utterly irresistible offer.
Provide a guarantee that takes the risk from your customer and puts it on you so that it’s an absolute no brainer for them to say heck yes.
I get that I’ve interrupted your day with this mahoosive long post and now things to do! But download this handy worksheet and schedule some time to work on your X factor! 📅
Why go to all this trouble?
The quicker you can get someone to go from potential customer to customer the quicker you have a repeat customer and someone who will become an advocate of your product or service. And the less time you give your competitors to swoon them (yes I said swoon). That’s the key to market domination and your success.
Not quite convinced yet?
Have you ever watched a toddler play with an iPhone and think how they hell does she know how to use it? Apple make their products easy and intuitive to use as possible.
Think about Google, they dominate the online world of online search because they make it super easy to find information and what you’re looking for.
My all time favourite case study, Amazon puts their customers first providing everything from A to Z and they are unrivalled in delivery.
Apple, Amazon, Google invest in removing friction and making it as easy as possible to do business with them. You can do it too.
Marketing is changing beliefs with the intent of purchase. Generosity marketing is the act of helping your potential customers make the right choice for them. That right there is the money shot, you don’t want customers to have to go hunting elsewhere, give them everything they need to make a decision and then make it as easy as possible for them to do business with you.
What can you do in your business to make it as easy as possible for customers to do business with you?
I’d love to hear what ideas you come up with to improve and accelerate your customers’ journey and increase the number of people who take you up on your offer.
If any of this is a little mind boggling, let’s chat about leveraging your X factor. I can help you with that. Let's have a chat and talk about ways we can create a selling machine for your business.
And if you want more business growth insights just like this sent straight to your inbox, then make sure you sign up to become a WWS insider 👇
