How to Become a Profit Queen (Part 1): 5 Ways You Need to Optimise your Business Model to Achieve Growth
Dr Kate De Jong
Helping Small Businesses Succeed ?? Business Consultant | Strategic Business Planning | Marketing Strategy | Bestselling Author | TEDx Speaker | Co-Host of the Thriving Business Podcast
Have you been in business for a while and you’re working your backside off, but you’re not making the money you deserve?
Are you feeling like a slave to your business?
Are you still not able to take a good holiday away because your business can’t run without you?
If so, you’re not alone.
It’s common for first-time business owners to get stuck around the ‘breakthrough’ phase in the 6 stages of business growth (see the image below).
Moving from breakthrough to profit and scale requires a whole new approach - and a whole new mindset.
This article is part one of a two-part series on how to grow and scale your business (you can access Part 2 here).
There are two areas you need to focus your attention on so you can finally create the freedom and revenue you desire.
Your two leverage points as a business owner:
1. Your Business Model.
Your business model is the process you apply to generate your leads, convert them into repeat sales, and how you price your products or services to generate profit. It encompasses the whole ‘customer buying journey’ that takes your customer on a journey with you to get maximum results and value, while simultaneously maximising their expenditure with you.
We’re covering your business model in this article (see part 2 for the operating model).
2. Your Operating Model.
Your operating model is how you operate your business. If you’re doing everything yourself right not, you won’t be able to grow or expand and you’ll remain forever trapped in your business.
Many experienced entrepreneurs often say:
“If you can’t take a break away from your business, then you don’t have a business.”
In a serial entrepreneur’s eyes, a business is something that can be sold on for a profit and it can run completely independently of you.
Your operating model is the piece that will give you leverage, time, and freedom. Discover how in Part 2 (click here).
So to grow and scale your business, let’s first look at the five elements you need to optimise in your business model.
5 Ways You Need to Optimise Your Business Model:
Lead Generation, Sales & Repeat Purchases.
The formula below defines your business growth potential (ref. Ryan Deiss, Digital Marketer, Houston, USA).
Each of the four different elements in the formula makes a big difference to your growth potential. And when you make a small change in each one of them, the compounding multiplying effect is significant.
So what are these elements and how do you go about optimising each one to maximise your growth potential?
1. Increase Your Leads
A lead is anyone who is interested in your product or service in some way. How are you letting people know that you exist and that you can solve their specific problems? How are you demonstrating your value so that people can become interested in your product or service?
This is the realm of ‘lead generation’ and it’s all about moving prospects from the ‘awareness’ phase into the ‘consideration’ stage of the buyer’s journey.
Methods to generate leads include social media marketing, content marketing, SEO (search engine optimisation), paid advertising, webinars, networking, and email marketing, just to name a few.
To get more customers into your pipeline, you need to have strategic methods in place to generate leads. Which strategies can you implement or grow to add more leads into your pipeline?
Ultimately all businesses who want to grow and scale need to have a ‘tap’ that they can turn on to generate new clients when needed.
To develop a ‘tap’ of leads that you can turn on and off when needed, you’ll need to enter the world of advertising.
If you spend $1 on ads and you get $3 in return, then you’ll never have to worry about money again.
Advertising allows you to generate clients on demand. Without advertising, you have to rely on your organic marketing strategies and word of mouth referrals, which of course are very important for small business (85% of all small business transactions come through word of mouth referrals).
But if you want to grow and scale, you’ll need to develop a lead generation strategy that includes advertising.
I highly recommend that you learn how to set up a digital marketing campaign (Caffeinate Digital’s 90-Day Lead Generation program is fantastic), or work with a digital marketing agency to dip your toe into the world of Google and Facebook Ads so that you can start to experience the ease and flow that advertising can bring to your business!
2. Increase the Amount of Customers You Serve
The next element to increase your growth potential is the number of customers you bring into the business.
In order to generate customers from your leads, you need to get really good at selling, i.e. turning your prospects into paying clients. This requires that you master the art of conversion through powerful sales conversations.
The ability to close deals and convert prospects into paying clients through compelling sales conversations is a real skill that you need to learn, develop, and practice continuously.
If this part makes you uncomfortable, you’re not alone, but you must focus on becoming great at selling as quickly as possible!
Selling is the piece that lets most female business owners down. Many women say they don’t want to come across as too pushy or aggressive. But selling doesn’t have to be about being pushy or aggressive. You can be completely authentic and gentle and still close your ideal clients into your programs.
If you haven’t already, I highly recommend that you attend an intense sales training course. I did this a while back and my conversion rate went up from around 10-20% to more than 50% conversion. With a few solid strategies, you can learn how to become much better at converting leads into clients.
If you do nothing else, just focus on learning to close clients through powerful sales conversations and your growth potential will increase dramatically.
An increase in your conversion rate has a significant impact on your business growth potential.
Now that you’re able to convert more leads into customers, the next thing to maximise is the profit margin on your products or services.
3. Increase Your Profit Margin
This is all about your pricing strategy. Your profit margin is the difference between your selling price and your cost for delivering that product or service.
For example, if you run workshops at $100 per ticket and you have 10 clients per workshop, then you generate $1000 revenue. But if your cost of venue hire and catering combined is $600, then your profit margin is only $400 per workshop. To increase your margin, you’ll need to either increase your price per ticket or find ways to reduce your venue and catering expenses.
What can you do to increase the profit margin on your products or services to increase your business growth potential?
4. Frequency of Purchase
The final element in your growth potential formula is the frequency in which you bring customers into your business. If you run webinars once every three months to generate leads and clients, then can you find ways to start doing that every two months instead?
The more frequently you’re generating leads and clients, the greater your business growth potential.
What can you do to start increasing the frequency of purchase?
5. Map Out Your Customer Buying Journey
If you want to grow and scale, you need to mindfully map out your customer buying journey because this is how you give maximum value to your customers while maximising their expenditure with your business.
Here are the steps included in the Buyer’s Journey developed by Caffeinate Digital.
- AWARE
- How will you make prospects aware that they have a problem you can solve?
- At Fempire we do this via content marketing, free videos, great lead magnets, SEO, and Google Ads.
- ENGAGE
- How will you catch your prospect’s attention and invite them into the journey with you? Via a Facebook Ad? Or Google Ad?
- At Fempire we mainly do this via Facebook advertising, which leads our prospects into a webinar.
- SUBSCRIBE
- How will you get prospects to engage with you and your brand? Via a webinar? Or discovery call? Or a free workshop? At this point, your prospect needs to opt in to spend either time or money with you.
- CONVERT
- How will convert your leads into paying clients? Via a sales call? Or a pitch at the end of your webinar?
- At Fempire we do this via a pitch at the end of our webinar.
- EXCITE
- How will you get your clients excited about their decision to invest with you? Via an email nurture sequence? Via follow up videos?
- At Fempire we excite our prospects via an extensive email nurture sequence and we get our prospects into a Facebook Group where we get them excited in the lead up to their Fempreneur program.
- ASCEND
- How will you lead your clients up through the different tiers of programs or products that you offer (see the image below to see how Fempire does the ‘ascend’ phase).
- ADVOCATE
- How will you deliver such a great experience that your clients become brand advocates and bring in referrals for you?
- PROMOTE
- How will you keep your clients connected with you so that you can continue to give them value and they can continue to promote your business for you?
- At Fempire we do this via our Fempire Elite membership group.
The Fempire Ascend Journey: Clients start by joining in the 6-week Fempreneur journey, then progress to our 12-month Mastery program, then to our Profit & Scale Program.
How will you lead your customers through the entire buying journey with you?
Get crystal clear on your specific customer buyer’s journey and put a strategy in place – including retargeting – in order to maximise your business growth potential.
So in this article, we’ve looked at Part 1 – Optimise Your Business Model. Head on over to Part 2 to find out how you can optimise your Operating Model to achieve huge profit and growth!
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Are you starting or growing your own business? Get your FREE Fempreneur Success Handbook and discover everything I wish someone had told me back when I was starting my business in 2014!
In service to your success,
Kate De Jong, Ph.D
Fempire Coach
https://katiedejong.com
About Kate
Kate De Jong is an expert Fempire Coach, blogger and inspirer who intimately understands (and shares) what it is like to juggle motherhood and entrepreneurship, whilst staying sane and enjoying the freedom and fulfilment of being a successful coach and fempreneur.
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Brand Manager | Marketing Strategist | Digital Marketing Specialist
4 年Thanks for this article Kate De Jong - I've been inspired to look at my lead generation and also improving my sales skills - it's been a few years since I did my last training and as I was selling gym memberships then - might be time for a refresher.