Getting Unstuck - The Simple Mistake Behind Why Businesses Hit Revenue Ceilings And How To Break Through Them

I once worked with a company (details changed for anonymity purposes) that was very successful in its niche - let’s call it X company.

X company had created an online marketplace for authors to meet with publishers looking for new books to sell.

The product was an instant hit.

The business continued to grow in revenue and customers for some time until, eventually, it hit a revenue ceiling.

Once it hit that point, it remained there (and is still stuck there to my knowledge).

Some years its revenue increased a bit, some years it went down, but on average it remained stuck at the same yearly revenue.

But why?

The Reason Any Business Hits A Revenue Plateau

The reason is the same reason why any business hits a revenue plateau - the only thing it sold was its product.

The problem with selling only a product is two-fold.

The number of “active buyers” is limited

At any given point in time, only 1% of any company’s target audience is actively looking to buy the type of solution it sells.

And this means that eventually, businesses hit a ceiling of how many of these “active buyers” they can convert into customers.

In X company’s case then, only 1% of all authors were actively looking to use an online marketplace to meet with publishers.?

The rest were either using or looking for other solutions or didn’t want to meet with publishers in the first place (wanted to go the self-publishing route)

As a result, X company simply ran out of authors it could sell its product to.

The business cannot make more money from its customers

If the only thing a business sells to its customers is its product, then thats the only thing that it can sell to them. As a result, its revenue is stifled.

This is because its internal identity (how it views itself) and its external identity (how others view it) aka its brand is that product.

In X company’s case then, its brand was that of a marketplace company that brought together publishers and authors online.?

As a result, the founders dismissed any idea that also create solutions that helped authors meet publishers in different ways (in person events for example) or solutions that taught authors how to contact publishers themselves directly.

They also dismissed any possibility of creating solutions and tools to help authors that were looking to self publish.

All because their brand identity was tied to being an “online marketplace for authors to meet publishers”.

As a result, the only thing it thought about selling to authors was its online solution.

What’s more, because of this brand identity, its customers would be unlikely to have bought other solutions from it because it doesn’t fit its expertise - we don’t buy groceries from our mechanic for example.

The Solution

The solution is to sell something more than just a product.

It’s to sell a specific belief, what I call a BLUNT belief - a strategy that I call The BLUNT Method.

This enables businesses to (amongst many other benefits):

1. Effectively sell to the 99% of those not actively looking to buy right now - massively increasing the amount of new customers that it can reach.
2. Create a brand identity that is far larger than just its product - enabling it to sell many more products to its existing customer base and generate more revenue from them.

Want to learn more about this strategy, why it works, read case studies of the companies big and small that have used it, and how to implement it in your business?

Visit www.thebluntmethod.com

About Chris

Chris has spent nearly two decades (and counting) marketing and selling products, services and software, both on and offline, in multiple countries around the world.

He has worked with businesses of all sizes – from startups to companies like Microsoft, Google, SAP, Oracle, Groupon and others, and has also created, marketed and ran multi-million dollar industry conferences in many different industries and countries around the world.

Chris is also, an accomplished writer, having written for numerous publications including The Times, one of the United Kingdom’s most well known newspapers.

Chris helps startups and businesses find and maintain breakthrough growth using?The BLUNT Method.