How To Dramatically Accelerate Growth With 10% Wins

It all began in 2006 when my partners and I started a business phone systems hardware company, Infiniti Telecommunications.

Back then, Google had reached its tipping point in Australia and, to capitalize on it, we focused all our energy on growing our business via the search engine.

We created our own Minimum Viable Product (MVP) — not that we knew what one was back then — and concentrated on just two things to grow the business: Traffic and Conversions.

We didn’t even handle the actual hardware! (We outsourced all the installation and support to third-party subcontractors across Australia.)

Instead, we basically functioned like an online marketing company who just happened to sell phone systems, and it seemed like a brilliant strategy to grow rapidly.

Problems, however, soon arose. In our naive enthusiasm, we were hitting revenue ceilings, losing steam, and leaving heaps of money on the table.

Turns out we were overlooking huge areas of profitability — like getting repeat purchases (not just one-and-done). In fact, because of our single-minded focus on Traffic and Conversions, we were actually helping our subcontractors “steal” all our newly acquired customers.

It hurt, but we knew we had to re-evaluate our business model; this time looking at our entire business to uncover what we were missing, and how we could produce sustainable profits.

Our discovery?

1. There are plenty of “metrics” to track, but only seven drivers of profit in all businesses.(Outside of these seven, nothing else matters.)

These are what we call the 7 Levers of Business.

2. Small and incremental improvements across these areas (rather than “big wins”) actually doubled our profits and led to long-term sustainable success. These small improvements are what we call 10% Wins — and this it the “secret sauce,” so to speak. (I’ll explain why it’s only “10%” later.)

Together, the 7 Levers of Business and 10% Wins provide the backbone to the 7 Levers Framework — a system I later created to grow many successful businesses for myself, my friends, and my consulting clients across many countries and industries.

The rest, as they say, is history.

In this article, I’ll show you exactly how the 7 Levers Framework works to increase profits without breaking a sweat. To support this, I’ve included case-studies (with templates and scripts) of the actual tactics I’ve used in my own businesses and those of my friends and clients.

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The 7 Levers of Business

Often, we’re taught there are only three things to pay attention to if you want to grow your business:

1. Get more customers
2. Increase the average value per order
3. Increase lifetime value through repeat sales.

Yes, these things will improve the revenue of a business, but they won’t necessarily improve the profitability or sustainability of a business.

We had the first two pretty much sewn up at Infiniti, but after our deep-dive into the business, we realized there are actually several more areas that influence profit.

You’ve probably already heard of (and worked on your own) “Customer Journey”, so I’d like to introduce you to the Profit Journey: The seven things that influence profit in any business.

These are the 7 Levers of Business, and are defined as follows:

1) Suspects: Anyone who visits your website or walks into your store (Basically, whatever you call “traffic”: first-time visitors or enquiries)

2) Prospects: People who take some action, beyond “just looking” (On a website, it could mean email opt-ins; in a store, it might mean trying on a garment)

3) Conversions: The percentage of your “prospects” who buy something

4) Average Item Price: The average price of the items you have sold across a period

5) Average Items Per Sale: The average number of items purchased in the transactions across a period

6) Transactions Per Customers: The number of times, on average, your customers make repeat purchases across a period

7) Profit Margin: Your overall profit margin of all sales as a percentage

These seven levers are responsible for all your results — everything else is a waste of your time, energy and money.

Sidebar:

I know, I know, noneof them are a total revelation. Heck, you probably know about most of them already; and you’re probably rolling your eyes at another use of the number “7” (“7 Habits…”, “7 Sins”, “7 Dwarfs” …)

Trust me, there are seven because there are seven. 12 years and a lot of data later, there’s no filler here. Nothing’s been added to make a “nice number”, or renamed because it “sounds better”!

But the important point here is that in order to drive profits, you need to pay attention to all of them, not just one or two. When you work on all seven Levers and, more importantly, leverage them, it makes a massive difference in your profits.

Plus, when you separate the steps, instead of lumping everything into just three categories, it lets you see all aspects of your business and gives you great clarity on what actually drives profit and where to focus your attention.

As Peter Drucker said:  What gets measured gets managed.

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10% Wins: How To Work Less To Gain More

Along with the important discovery that we needed to pay attention to all seven Levers, there was another, more powerful shift in our mindset we had to make at Infiniti.

It goes against traditional advice, but this one mindset made the difference between stressing and spinning our wheels and boosting profits without running ourselves into the ground.

The mindset shift is this: Don’t focus on the huge win.

Yep. I said it. Don’t focus on the huge win. A small, 10% Win in each of the seven Levers will actually double your profits, thanks to the power of compounding.

Allow me to back that up with the help of some 6th-grade math.

What you can see is, although a 10% Win might seem small, when it’s compounded by the next and the next… the result is a 95% lift overall.

Suddenly those “small wins” don’t seem so small.

Here’s another benefit: 10% Wins are quicker and easier (I think we all can enjoy that). You will start to see results sooner, and with less effort.

It’s also a way of creating a kind of Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop, to make sure you keep tabs on your progress at regular intervals.

Instead of focusing all your effort on a “make or break” traffic campaign over a few months, you could spend a week (or a month) implementing a simpler campaign for a 10% Win in your Suspects, then move on to Prospects, Conversions and so on.

We also realized that focusing on just one or two Levers created imbalances. And in the case of Infiniti, if we’d carried on as we were, it could have ended in failure.

What’s more, once you achieve these easy victories in all seven Levers, you can cycle back through the levers and let the compounding effect of the 10% Wins work for you again by doubling down on your first efforts, or trying something new.

Something to remember here is that a 10% Win could be something hiding right under your nose, or it could be a technique or an opportunity you’ve overlooked because it might ‘only’ give a 10% improvement in one Lever — and so you considered it a ‘failure’.

So…

• No need to 6X your email signups; just get a 10% win
• No need to boost conversions by 300%; just get a 10% win
• No need to worry about “slashing” costs; just get a 10% win

Not only do you not need to “go big or go home” with each Lever, you’ve got to agree that getting a 10% Win in each of the seven Levers is infinitely easier than getting a 100% increase in one.

Want to calculate how 10% Wins can help YOU? Use the  7 Levers of Business Interactive Calculator  and see how tiny improvements can make a massive difference to your bottom-line.

Why “The 7 Levers Framework”?

We call it a Framework because it’s more than just an idea, or a checklist of things to “keep an eye on”. It’s a way to look at what you are doing in your business, to evaluate strategies and tactics, to give you direction and to keep you on track.

• The 7 Levers are valid in literally every business — whether you’re a plumber in England or run an online SaaS in Silicon Valley… or whether you’re making $100/mo or $100,000 — all your profits are controlled by these seven key areas.
• The mindset shift to 10% Wins means you achieve more but spend less time and effort on any one area of business.

Together, it’s a reference that helps you avoid two common mistakes made by entrepreneurs and growth hackers: Focusing on only ONE area of the business and always shooting for the fences. We learned this lesson the hard way in Infiniti. Save yourself the trouble.

But it’s not easy to take this “bigger picture view” when there’s the promise of a big win. For example, it’s all too often we see case-studies like How to Raise $100,000 in 10 Days, How to Gather 100,000 Emails in One Week or How to Create a Million-Dollar Business This Weekend, and think they are the norm.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s all GREAT advice. Yet we are always better to play the odds and work a reliable strategy — one that allows for big wins, but has its foundation in sustainability.

Look at it this way: if all you do is keep your focus on Traffic and Conversion, it’s like going to the gym and exercising just your arms; the rest of your body will lag behind.

Part 2: Your 10% Wins: Action Steps

OK, so you’ve got the theory from part 1 above.

But I’m guess what you are waiting for is the ‘how-to’ — “how do I get the 10% Wins in each Lever that drive the profit growth in my business?”

What follows are some actual tactics that we have used in my companies to get 10% Wins (or greater), with ideas about how you can apply them in your own business.

Every one of them can be implemented with little effort. After all, we’re only going for a 10% Win. Once you’ve got the idea, and put the foundations in place, you can “go big” if you like (most of them scale pretty well too), but remember not to over-focus on anyone Lever.

Disclaimer: I’ve done my best to give you actual, detailed examples from my own companies (or my friends and clients).

Some might not apply to your business or might even seem unusual. I’ve tried to use some of my more off-the-wall ideas, just to keep things interesting (and to give you an edge).

Don’t worry. Later in this article, I’ll show you a six-step framework to help you find low-hanging fruit to achieve your very own 10% Wins in every Lever (called the “6 C’s”).

01. Suspects

Suspects are people who interact with your business (for the first time). That could be phone calls, foot traffic into your store, or web traffic to your eComm business.

To “pull” this Lever, we’re looking for ways to increase the number of people “through the door” by 10%. The most fundamental way of doing this is to make sure that you (or your message) is in front of your suspects when they are looking for a solution to a problem.

At Infiniti, we did this primarily using Google Adwords. There are plenty of resources out there to get you started with using online advertising on Google, Facebook, and so on, but I wanted to start with a specific case study to get you thinking about things the right way.

A business I worked with for a while was a boutique motion picture investment broker — basically, they helped people invest in films. Their pool of potential suspects was relatively small (high net worth individuals looking for something different to invest in), so we had to be a bit smarter with our approach.

The business had grown via direct response marketing, targeting the people they could identify and reaching out to them directly, but these things have their limits.

We turned back to online advertising, and ran a simple campaign targeting the very niche industry of “Film Investment” via a series of keywords (including “Film Investment” and “Investing in Film”).

This campaign was enough to get adverts in front of potential Suspects, and to get an extra four or five visits a week to their website. Not a huge number of new suspects, and in some businesses hardly worth the effort. But it was enough to register as a 10% Win for this client, and a great additional source of suspects for their business.

How can you replicate this in your business? Start by thinking where (and how) your potential suspects are looking for solutions, and who they are. Using online advertising, you can choose not only the keywords you want to match, but also the geographical area you want to cover (and on Facebook and LinkedIn you can target with far more granularity by matching aspects of the profiles).

All is not lost if you are a brick and mortar store. Your suspects are often simply walking or driving nearby. I’ve heard of lots of examples of people who have got an instant 10% Win from simply putting up an A-Board outside their store (or at a nearby intersection), letting people know what they offer and where they are.

02. Prospects

Prospects are people who take an action that indicates that they are more than “just looking”. On a website, it could mean email opt-ins; in a store, it might mean trying on a garment; or if you’re a service provider, it’s actually receiving a custom quote. Whatever your business, these micro-commitments always exist, and they are the steps — however small — that your suspects take before opening their wallets and giving you their credit card.

Identifying and improving your Prospects is about clarifying what that micro-commitment is and finding a way to get more of them.

The web is full of advice on how to “increase your opt-ins” (See places like ConversionXL.com for some great content on the subject), so again, I’ll talk about something a little different to get you thinking — an example from my own personal world.

Back in the day, one of my first jobs was with The Athlete’s Foot, the shoe store chain. They had a concept they called “Greet and Seat”, which they drove into the sales staff on a daily basis — because it worked.

The idea was to greet every customer, with the sole intention (pun intended) of getting them to sit down and try on some footwear.

Everyone who stepped into the store was to be ‘greeted and seated’, NOT ‘greeted and sold’.

There was a very conscious distinction on behalf of the franchise, as they had the experience and evidence (up to 35% boost in some stores) to know that someone who sits down and tries something on is far more likely to buy, and far less likely to be a “looky-loo”. This was their own micro-commitment.

We were given lots of “scripts” and training to ensure we spoke to Suspects and Prospects (as I call them now) differently. But the core of the idea was to engage the Suspect in a dialog, and get them trying on shoes, thus turning them into a Prospect.

How can you use this in your business? When someone walks into a store, The Athlete’s Foot has found that engaging questions like “Have you been here before?” or “Have you had your foot size measured or pressure mapped recently?” results in a much more open dialog. Conversely, the clichéd “Can I help you”, would almost always result in the equally clichéd, “no, just looking.”

People ask me about this so often, I wrote an article on the subject that gives a bunch more ideas on better questions to ask in a retail setting.

If you’re in retail, but still struggling with what your specific micro-commitment might be for some reason, try starting with measuring Suspect engagement with these types of questions. At the end of the day, someone who is willing to talk to you or your staff is less likely to be “just looking,” right?

In other businesses — especially online — the micro-commitment may be more apparent. Go find yours and come up with a plan to improve this Lever.

03. Conversions

Obviously, a Conversion is where a Prospect buys or orders something from you. So to increase this Lever, you need to get more Prospects to buy from you.

Again, like the Prospects Lever, there’s a lot of material available on “Sales”, “Closing” or “Website Conversion Rate Optimization” techniques, so I’ll again avoid the obvious and share an unusual idea that continues to have a positive return for our businesses. We call it “Resuscitation Marketing” and it provided a very reliable 10% boost to our conversion rates.

Every day, businesses “lose” customers. Or, in a lot of cases, they never actually get them — their Prospects never even become Conversions. They just drift off without making a purchase.

At Infiniti we have a series of systems in place to follow up with these “dead leads”, and “resuscitate” them, to have another go at turning them into conversions.

Basically, when our CRM/eCommerce systems flag a lead as “dead”, our sales team categorize any dead leads into one of about six categories, which then kick off a range of automated marketing campaigns to do a little ‘CPR’.

In each case, once the lead has been categorized, we send them a series of personalized, automated emails, addressing their particular issue and encouraging them to come back to the fold. We also use this as a way to show a bit of our character, in the hope of building a relationship with these people.

I’ve included some examples of the actual emails we send to these leads below.

Some common Segmentation Categories that we use:

[MIA] Missing-In-Action or Disengaged

• This categorizes the type of lead that — after getting a quote — no longer responds to the sales team directly
• Here we send them fun emails like the examples below

SAMPLE ‘MIA’ EMAIL:

Subject: Did {Salesperson} Offend You?

Hi {FirstName},

Over the past few weeks, {Salesperson}, here at Infiniti has discussed with you a new phone system solution — but as I was going through some records, I noticed he hasn’t been able to help you find the right solution to implement yet.

Because this happens so infrequently, I am concerned that {Salesperson} — usually highly praised by new clients — has somehow miscommunicated, failed to understand your needs, or worse yet — offended you.

Nothing is more important to us than our key focus of helping small businesses like yours improve their communications.

So if there is anything that we should know about your interaction with {Salesperson}, or your reasons for not at least trying our Money Back Guarantee (we’re the only Telco in Australia to offer one), I’d appreciate it if you would let me know with a short reply.

Thanks in advance,

Sue

ALTERNATE ‘MIA’ EMAIL:

Subject: Were you eaten by a T-Rex?

Hi {FirstName},

Just wanted to reach out one last time regarding your recent phone system enquiry.

{Salesperson} from our team tried to contact you a number of times via phone and email but could never get through … which means only one of three things.

Whichever it is — please let me know with a quick click:

{LINK} You’ve been eaten by a T-Rex and can’t respond, or;

{LINK} You’re interested, but haven’t had time to respond, or;

{LINK} You are not actually interested in a new phone system at all.

Thanks Sue.

P.S. If you were attacked by a T-Rex, we’ve written up a small survival guide which might be helpful. Best of luck!

[LTC] Lost To Competitor

• For leads who made their primary purchase with a competitor, but where a future purchase of a subsidiary or complementary solution is possible
• In this case we send them automated emails such as the ‘cheeky’ example below

SAMPLE ‘LTC’ EMAIL:

Subject: Did They Drop The Ball?

Morning {FirstName},

I just wanted to send a quick email to a few people who we couldn’t help recently; with a crazy idea.

Our service department were telling me the other day how they got a call from someone who bought elsewhere but wanted our tech support to “reprogram the phones, as the other guys dropped the ball”

So I thought I’d reach out to a few ‘lost’ clients to see if their provider “dropped the ball” as well ;)

If your recent phone system implementation didn’t go quite to plan, and you’d like our help reprogramming or fixing the systems set-up, let me know, as I will happily waive the normal call out fee for our technicians.

A little cheeky — maybe … but I thought it would be an interesting test, as the service team say they get similar calls all the time.

Hope we can help,

Sue

[PoP] Purchase On Pause

• Leads who are not taking any purchasing action, and have placed their buying decision on hold for the immediate future
• In this case, we send regular reminders via email and set tasks for the sales people to touch base
• We send the occasional ‘news worthy’ piece to help with their buying decisions when they get back to it
• It’s about keeping front of mind
• The short email below is one that we send at around 90 days (it’s an idea I swiped from Dean Jackson)

SAMPLE ‘PoP’ EMAIL:

Subject: RE: Phone System

Hey {FirstName},

Still interested in a new phone system?

Regards,

Sue

How can you quickly and easily implement some of these ideas in your business? Start by tracking the point of Conversion in your business, and follow-up with anyone who abandons a shopping cart or doesn’t place an order after you send a quote (for example).

If you are using e-Commerce software like Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce, there are features/extensions available to help identify things like ‘Cart Abandonment’ — there are also lots of third party tools.

Once you have identified these people (whatever your business), as long as you have their email address you can use simple (or complex) email automation tools like Active CampaignMailchimp, Dripor ConvertKitto follow up. By spending a few hours writing the emails and pre-loading them into a sequence, they continue to work for you on auto-pilot every day. It’s a great return on investment.

You can implement something similar to my Infiniti examples with people who don’t place an order after you send them a quote. Ideally, in this day and age, you ask for their email address “so you can send the quote”. Why not wait a day or two, then add them to a sequence of emails that gives them a gentle nudge? Maybe even add some value along the way — send them a case-study or some testimonials, for example. Of course, you need to remember to take them out of the sequence if they place an order!

You might not be able to convert every ‘dead’ lead, but a simple resuscitation campaign could give you an unconventional 10% lift in Conversions.

04. Average Item Price

The Average Item Price is calculated by taking the value of all the items you have sold in a period of time (say, six months or one year) and dividing it by the number of items sold.

The most obvious way to get a 10% Win in this Lever is to “put your prices up”, but I hope by now you expect more of me than to just give you this ‘obvious’ response! Over the years, I’ve had more push back from suggesting people put their prices up than just about anything else, so I’m going not going to go there today.

Thankfully, in our eCommerce business SimplyHeadsets.com.au we came up with a helpful way to increase the average item price.

We have a team of people who call everyone who places an order online.

Yes, it’s an eCommerce business, but we have a human operator call each customer, under the premise of “Checking the Details of the Order”. Of course, Checking the Order is what they are doing. They go through the items and the customers requirements and make sure that there is a match. But what they are also doing is creating a dialogue with the customer to see if there is an alternative product that might suit their needs better, potentially for a higher price.

When we make one of these matches, it’s a win-win — the client gets a personalized service and the product that will truly meet their needs, and we achieve a higher Average Item Price.

Sidebar: I’d love to be able to say this idea came to me fully-formed from wisdom and foresight. But the truth is it actually came to us by accident out of an idea to help increase an earlier lever — Conversions.

From experience, at SimplyHeadsets.com.au we know that Office Headsets can be a frustrating product to buy, due to compatibility — especially when ordered online. So, in an effort to reduce refunds (and improve our net conversion rate — as returns should be acknowledged when calculating this), we began calling all online buyers prior to fulfillment to ensure they ordered the right item for their needs and equipment.

What we soon discovered was that not only did these calls create a better customer experience and prevent returned products — thus achieving a higher net conversion rate — but it also became a growth tool for our Average Item Price.

When we analysed the data, we found the customers were often adjusting their orders to choose more appropriate — and higher priced — items. So the team were effectively “upselling” the clients while genuinely helping them.

How can this apply to you? It’s about creating that dialogue with your client, and not just accepting that their order is what they really wanted (obviously you need to have a higher-priced item/service to sell them). You can use the same technique as we do and call them up after they have placed the order, or just take the time to understand their needs better while they are still Prospects.

If you’re stuck for ways of having these conversations, Neil Rackham wrote a great book, called SPIN Selling, that walks you step-by-step through a method of doing this “Consultative Selling”.

05. Average Items Per Sale

The Average Items Per sale is calculated by taking the number of items you have sold in a period of time and dividing it by the number of transactions/orders.

The simplest way to improve this lever is to make non-sleazy upselling or cross-selling a part of your sales process. This means offering customers additional items that relate to their main purchases.

Pop quiz: What’s the greatest upsell of all-time?

A: “Would you like fries with that?”

By now, you must have come across this world-famous line at least once, even if you’re not a fast-food fan. But the truth is, it works.

The secret is that the item offered should be something cheaper than the first, and that’s complimentary or helpful, like a shoe cleaner with shoes or mascara with blusher (the cheaper item should always be offered second).

As I mentioned, one of the toughest things about buying headsets for an office phone system is compatibility. So, to make sure our customers are delighted with their purchases, we put a pop-up window during the add-to-cart process at SimplyHeadsets.com.au which asked what phone system they had.

Once we have this info, they can be sure everything will be compatible and easy to use, and we can offer them additional items with an “Add Both to My Cart” button.

How can you do this easily? Implementing this for Simply Headsets required some pretty nifty code, but you can do it in any business by simply making sure that related products are displayed near to — or next to — each other.

If you want to replicate this in an online store, but don’t have a super-sophisticated eCommerce platform (or access to a ninja developer), you can often use basic features to create “bundles” or “categories” that group items together. Of course, with a teensy bit more effort, you can actually add a simple “Related Items” section to the product pages of most eCommerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce (that last one has it as a standard feature).

In retail, implementing the same idea could be as simple as putting ties and cufflinks near to where you hang dress shirts in your clothing store.

In a services business, you have the option of putting information about complementary services in with any quote you send.

06. Transactions

The Transactions Lever refers to the number of times a customer buys from you in a given period.

Very often, this is just a matter of staying in touch with your customers after the first sale, and reminding them of relevant products or services related to their purchase.

I have another retail store example for you here. This is an appropriate place to give an example from my book, Cadence. The book is a business parable — like Built To Sell — that is based on the lessons I learned from using the 7 Levers in many businesses through the years.

In this case, the owner of the bike store at the centre of the story in the book creates a series of emails based on which type of bike or product the customer purchased — road racing, kids, commuter and so on.

He loads these emails into an Email Autoresponder, and gets the email address of his clients when they purchase. The time-delayed emails go out reminding people about bike services, replacement or extra gear depending on the item purchased, the season, and so on. For example, one email, sent to commuter/folding bike customers is about “Gear to make the commute easier.”

How can you swipe this idea? The core of this idea works for any business — send relevant, targeted follow-up communication to your customers.

Pick a product/service (or group of products) and write out a series of simple emails that talk about additional related items/services. Or perhaps remind your customers about things that may be relevant at a particular time, like yearly services, winter checkups, and new outfits for summer.

Depending on how complex your Email Automation tool is, you might need to set up a few different sequences. For example, one could be your “Commuter Bike Customer” sequence, just for people who bought that product. Another could be “Seasonal Reminders” that everyone gets because a winter checkup (or a new summer wardrobe) is relevant to everyone.

07. Margins

The margins of a business are what’s left after you take away the cost of sale. In our case, we express this as a percentage.

Some businesses live and die on their margins. Hopefully, yours isn’t one of them. But still, keeping an eye on costs never hurts.

But I’d like to share one slightly unusual tactic we’ve used to reduce costs across all the businesses in our group.

We ask our suppliers for ‘Target Rebates’.

Let me explain. Based on our experience, planning and the power of the 7 Levers we have faith in our growth. Yet our suppliers don’t always share the same view.

Very often, we might not qualify for the price levels or volume discounts based on our current order levels (sound familiar?) So if we can’t get a discount, we negotiate with our suppliers to reduce our prices if and when we hit certain levels; and that these rates would be retrospectively applied to all purchases in the same period. Effectively, we’re asking for a rebate if we hit a target.

You’d be amazed, but with a little relationship building and love, it’s very possible to do this. We’ve had a lot of success with it over the years, and it’s resulted in huge savings when we hit our sales targets.

It reduces the risk on the supplier, as they don’t have to give us ‘undeserved’ discounts now (since we don’t qualify) — typically you only get the tiered pricing benefits when your order meets that next qualifying level — and it provides us with great incentives to grow.

How can you replicate this tactic for yourself? Very often, it’s simply a case of ‘having the conversation’ with your suppliers, and asking the question.

I’ve included a sample script below, to ease you into the process (there’s no need to copy the Australian accent, unless you think it might help!)

TARGET REBATE SCRIPT:

“Hi {Supplier Reps Name}, You have a volume-based tiered pricing program, correct? In that, if our volumes increased and we ordered more, our wholesale pricing will get cheaper?”

(inevitability they will begin to salivate and say “yes”)

“OK Great, what level are we on currently? And what discount are we currently getting?”

(They reply with whatever it is)

“Fair enough … what is the next level? Where does our volume need to get to, and what’s the incentive or additional discount?”

(They roll out the facts)

“Great … and when we get to that level, the discount applies to all our orders correct?”

(They will agree)

“Is it fair to guess you’re incentivized to get us up to that level as well?”

(insert small knowing laugh to break the ice)

(They are likely to respond: “Well yeah.. That’s my job.”)

“Awesome, lets both make some more money.”

(another ice breaking laugh)

“We’ve just done some pretty strong planning and have some solid growth goals in place for the next {X} months; which will result in our order levels easily hitting that level … I need your help on one small thing so we can make it work. Is that possible?”

(Reponse is likely to be: “Yes, well it depends on what it is…”)

“Don’t worry I’m not asking you to give me that discount today, I know we don’t qualify… yet.

We’re going to give up a little operating cashflow and invest heavily in making this happen and hitting those levels, so we’d love you to help out like other suppliers, and when we do hit that target, provide a rebate on all orders from today until then, at that next level price.

So I’m not asking for a discount today, just a rebate when our increase in volume warrants it. Other suppliers have acknowledged there is no risk on their side, because we’ll keep buying as we are now, and if we don’t hit the target, then no rebate.

It works out really well for you and a strong incentive for us.

That’s easily doable, right?”

Part 3: How To Get Your Own 10% Wins, Right Now

When I share the 7 Levers Framework with people as we did in parts 1 and 2, the other thing I share is our 6Cs Checklist. I’ll go over it quickly here, but it’s covered in more detail in my book, Cadence.

The 6Cs are:

• Clarify
• Capture
• Calculate
• Correct
• Create
• Cycle

When you first begin implementing the 7 Levers in your business, you start at the first one and work your way through.

Step 1: Clarify

Define what each Lever means in your business. What is a “Suspect”? What action signifies that someone is a “Prospect”?

Step 2: Capture

Capture the activities you are currently doing to “pull” each lever.

Step 3: Calculate

Define the measurement period and calculate figures for each of the 7 Levers in your business.

Step 4: Correct

At this point, just observing these parts of your business may have uncovered some issues or inefficiencies that can be easily fixed for some quick wins. Get to it and grab that low-hanging fruit!

Step 5: Create

Come up with ideas for getting 10% Wins in each of your Levers, then implement them. Do this sequentially, focussing on one lever for at least a week (or even a month) to give yourself a chance to get the tactics implemented, then move onto the next lever.

Step 6: Cycle

When you’ve tried all seven of your 10% Wins tactics, go back and start again: Take another measurement (Calculate), see if anything has gone off-track (Correct), then Create some new 10% Wins tactics and apply them.

Wrap Up: What Are YOUR 10% Wins?

By now, you can see you don’t need radical overhauls, major strategic shifts, or huge transformations to double your bottom line.

You just need to make a few improvements to what you’re already doing and reap the rewards, one step at a time.

The 7 Levers Framework gives you a balanced approach to business growth that’s not only easy, but that also compounds rapidly.

So let me ask you:

What are YOUR 10% wins?

What is something you previously tried and ruled a “failure” because it was “only a 10% increase?”

Or what is something from this article (or the new book Cadence) you think you can try, to give you a 10% boost this week?

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About The Author: Pete Williams

Pete Williams is an entrepreneur, advisor, and marketer who Forbes recently called, “one entrepreneur today that every marketer should be modeling,” Inc. described him as, “a savvy marketing strategist.” and Entrepreneur listed him in their recent “Today’s Top Entrepreneurs Under 40”.

His latest book, Cadence, was born from the 7 Levers framework developed inside his real-world businesses.

Pete is also a Professor of Practice at Deakin University, Australia.

About The Book Cadence:

Cadence (Amazon) is the award-winning story of a business owner and triathlon coach named JJ who left his stable job as a teacher to fulfill his dream of becoming an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, two years after opening his bike shop, Cadence, JJ finds himself in a place that is all too familiar to most business owners — struggling to stay afloat. That all changes, fast, when an athlete he coaches, in turn, teaches him how to turn the store’s profitability around with seven key “10% Wins”

For more visit www.CadenceBook.com