A common question we hear at Predictable Profits is, “How do I grow my business?” It’s a question with no easy answer, but we have several tips to help guide you down a path toward exponential business growth.
This famous quote from legendary football coach Lou Holtz is very much applicable to when trying to figure out how to grow your own business.
Like most entrepreneurs, you’re always looking for ways to grow your business. You probably also have a few tried-and-true methods that always work.
In this blog post, we discuss key strategies we’ve used with thousands of businesses.
The truth is, there’s no magic bullet when growing a business. It takes hard work and dedication.
Hall of Fame football coach, sportscaster, author, and motivational speaker Lou Holtz famously said, “In this world, you’re either growing, or you’re dying. So get in motion and grow.”
And we believe this to be true — whether you’re an athlete trying to improve your game or a busy entrepreneur burning the candle at both ends.
The moment you stop growing your business, it starts to die. You become less competitive. You start losing customers. And you stop attracting top talent.
Problems escalate when you add to the fact that new players enter the market every day. Each one competing with you (and each other) to capture market share and become a preferred vendor.
In our experience, growth stalls because many small business owners don’t have a strategic mindset. Most simply don’t have a scalable strategy that extends beyond word-of-mouth, referrals, and hard work.
(Check out some of our success stories; how we helped businesses achieve explosive growth.)
In this blog post, we share with you our signature system for taking businesses to the next level.
Setting suitable objectives and identifying strategies or opportunities are vital to growing a business. Nevertheless, you must turn your ideas into actions to achieve your end goals. Read about tactical planning in this related piece.
The Basics of Growing Your Business
First things first, you must understand there are three ways — and only three ways — to grow a business.
Much can be said about hard work, having a solid business plan, putting together an incredible team, or maximizing profit margins. But if we’re talking about growing a business, it all boils down to just these three.
- You can get more customers. This is where your lead generation and demand generation efforts come in.
- You can get your customers to spend more money with you. You do this by upselling and cross-selling, thereby increasing the size of each transaction (in quantity and price).
- You can get them to buy from you with greater frequency. A few options for this approach include loyalty programs, having an awesome customer experience, and staying top-of-mind.
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Whether you’re looking to improve your goal-setting and planning, increase productivity, make better decisions, or develop your leadership skills, a business coach can provide the guidance and support you need to succeed.
Don’t wait any longer to realize the benefits of having a business coach in your corner – talk to the Predictable Profits team today for a free strategy session.
Next-Level Business Growth: Momentum, Leverage, and Optimization
If you want your business to grow exponentially, you need to understand and apply three principles — momentum, leverage, and optimization.
Many business owners focus solely on generating traffic or acquiring customers. Yet when you understand and implement these principles, you can create systems for growing at an accelerated rate.
Check out this related piece, “How to Value a Business: A Guide for Small Business Owners.”
1. Using Momentum For Business Growth
Seems every time you check your email or social media, you have some expert or guru saying you’re missing out on the latest growth hack or strategy.
But the truth is if you already have traffic, leads, and sales, you have everything needed to grow your business.
And here’s why:
You already have proof of concept, meaning you already have something people want.
You also have momentum.
So if you’re looking to add more revenue, you first need to identify all the areas where you have momentum.
Start with where you currently generate traffic. Then move to ways you generate leads and how you generate sales.
Now create a systems map of each area in your business. Then inside each area, determine what you can do to make small, incremental improvements.
This creates momentum, which fuels growth.
The process is similar to building a fire by rubbing two sticks together. If you keep rubbing, you eventually get a tiny ember. Blow on the ember, feed it kindling, and your fire grows.
Growing your business is just identifying those tiny embers and coaxing them to create a flame.
Just like riding a bicycle, you need momentum to get moving. Then once you have it, you can start going faster with less effort. The same goes for growing a business.
One saying we always refer to here at Predictable Profits is, “success leaves clues.”
Deliver predictable results with these three growth strategies that helped propel Google from a tiny little search engine into one of the world’s most successful companies: “3 Secrets Google Can Teach Us About Growing Any Business.”
2. Optimization is Key To Growing Your Business
With momentum, you build on what’s working in your business. Optimization is about adding efficiency at a greater scale.
You ask yourself:
- How can I get the most out of what I’m already doing?
- How can I get the most value out of every one of my leads?
- How can I do more of what’s already working?
- How can I do less of what’s not working?
With optimization, you can plug these gaps and start generating increased profits in overlooked places.
Optimization is integral to the OSI Method, our signature method of growing and scaling businesses. The “O” in the OSI Method is “Optimization.”
Delivering predictable results is key to sustainable business growth. Check out this related article, “Four Tips for Creating a Business That You Can Sell”.
One way to optimize your business processes is to identify and track key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to your company’s goals.
By regularly measuring and analyzing these KPIs, you can better understand what is working well and where there are opportunities for improvement.
This can help you to identify bottlenecks or inefficiencies in your processes and make adjustments to increase efficiency and effectiveness.
Focusing on key performance indicators ensures that your business processes are aligned with your overall goals and are driving the desired results.
With optimization, you can accomplish more without additional spending, working harder, or launching a complicated marketing strategy.
All you need to do is find those hidden opportunities within your business. Sometimes you might need a business coach or a growth agency to show you.
You have many options for optimizing your business. Here are a few examples:
- You can increase leads through a multi-channel approach. For example, you could combine LinkedIn with cold email.
- You can do more systematic follow-ups to keep your brand top-of-mind.
- You can increase conversions with follow-up or through retargeting with stronger offers;
- You can increase your price by strengthening your unique advantage point.
- You can increase your average order size with more personalized up-selling and value enhancers that encourage buying in greater quantity or frequency;
- You can create special, loyalty-driven deals to encourage your existing customers to keep doing business with you;
- You can develop a customer re-engagement strategy to target inactive leads or offer special financing to non-buyers.
- You can increase predictable service revenues by offering recurring service packages to customers, which allow them to pay for a set of services on a regular basis.
Looking for more tips to improve your outbound campaigns? Check out this related piece on increasing the response to your cold email outreach.
The beauty is– optimization works in tandem with momentum.
Yes, you can discover new opportunities to boost your bottom line with just a few adjustments. But if you use optimization together with momentum, you often see results faster.
Demand generation is a hot topic among marketers today. But many people have the misconception that demand generation and lead generation are somehow the same thing.
Read more about the difference between the two concepts here in our related piece, “Demand Generation vs. Lead Generation: What’s the Difference?”
3. Grow Your Business With The Power of Leverage
Many business owners fail because they try to do everything themselves. As a result, the company is too dependent on them or a few key employees.
Think about juggling for a moment…
The best can juggle up to six or seven items, but there’s eventually a cap to where they fail and everything crashes down.
The same happens with business owners who take on too many tasks.
This is why leverage is needed to grow a business and where systems come into play. Systems allow for fast hiring and easy replication of success, preventing overwhelm. Systemization is the second stage of the OSI method ( the “S”).
Implementing well-designed business systems can lead to a more predictable outcome, as they provide a framework for consistent processes and decision-making, helping to minimize chaos and unpredictability.
This can be particularly beneficial for growing businesses, which often rely on the efforts of a few key individuals and may be more vulnerable to disruptions.
A business can operate more efficiently and effectively by establishing clear systems and procedures, leading to better outcomes and increased profitability.
Proper systems beat better talent. Case in point: Mcdonald’s is successful not because they make the best hamburgers. The company has systems that ensure the same experience, whether it’s the quality of food or your experience as a customer.
Most systems allow you to get more done in less time and effort. The businesses that will win the most market share today and tomorrow are the ones who know how to leverage the right systems.
Systems create consistent, predictable results. They also allow for scalability.
At Predictable Profits, we show you how to implement systems and create an environment where your team builds systems for you. The latter is how you keep your business from being too dependent on you.
Leveraging systems allows you to have a self-growing business because you can scale with predictability and consistency.
Successful people find ways to maximize every second of every day by leveraging as many resources as possible so they can be even more productive.
Read more about leverage here: “Battlefield Confessions From the 4-Hour Workweek.”
For more about momentum, optimization, and leverage, check out Charles Gaudet’s business growth secrets series on the Beyond 7 Figures podcast:
Problems Encountered By Business Owners Trying to Grow
Business owners frustrated with lack of growth often don’t know how to make it happen.
At the same time, they have problems such as
- No predictability in generating leads or sales.
- The company is too dependent on them or a few key employees.
- They don’t know what to focus on next.
- The company is too reliant on word-of-mouth and referrals.
- They don’t have scalable sales or marketing strategies.
- The company is forced to lower its profit margin as it competes on price.
- They lose business to inferior competitors.
- The company isn’t growing fast enough.
These are all common barriers, but they can be overcome with careful planning and execution.
Of course, these frustrations can also be addressed by working with a growth agency that can create a plan for you and help you focus on specific areas for improvement.
Read more about it here: “What Frustrations Can Business Owners Address When Working With a Growth Agency?”
A Word of Caution on Using Growth Hacks
As humans, we just naturally gravitate to what’s easiest and produces the fastest results. A growth hack is just a short-term tactic; it’s not the key to taking your business beyond seven figures.
Growth hacking implies some sort of silver bullet — a magic trick to generate sales and leads. But what most people don’t tell is that growth hacks have short lifespans.
No matter what industry you’re in– whether in software development, real estate, services, or retail, if you want to build a wildly successful business and take your business beyond seven figures, start thinking about the process.
Most people underestimate the work and strategic thinking needed to drive growth.
Remember– the difference between those who make it big and those who do not come down to those people who are willing to roll up the sleeves and do the work.
Check out this related piece: “Why is My Business Not Making Any Money (and What Can I Do About It)?”
A Final Word on the Predictable Profits Guide to Growing Your Business
Growing a business starts by understanding basics and then building on this knowledge.
Momentum propels you forward and can fuel explosive growth when combined with optimization and leverage. Optimization sets you up for sustainable success, and leverage allows your company to thrive without it being dependent on you or a few key employees.
As you can see, there is plenty to consider when growing your company. If you’re feeling overwhelmed or have any questions, reach out to schedule a growth strategy session with our team.
When you do, we’ll start developing a growth plan to take your business to the next level. Contact us today.
Let’s build a predictable selling system. Predictable outcomes rely on your ability to develop the right systems. Check out this two-part coverage on building systems for your business:
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