Do you know what the hardest, most complex, expensive, and time-consuming way to scale a business is? It’s constantly doing more and focusing on implementing new and different things in your business.
Is there a time and place for new and different? Absolutely! It’s how you remain innovative and helps keep your competitive advantage, but it’s not as often as you might think (or want)….
The fastest results often come from optimizing what’s already working in your business. That’s how you accelerate scaling and keep things simple and sustainable.
Focusing on new vs. optimization is the 5th part of a 10-part series on the top 10 ways that small businesses are leaving massive amounts of time and profit on the table in their business.
The challenge is that Visionaries love to create!
The side effect is that this creates a lot of waste in a business and is one of the leading causes of lost time, revenue, and profit, plus it is the root cause of other areas of waste such as unnecessary complexity, incomplete work, delays, and poor quality.
This applies to most facets of what you do in your business but a common example is continually putting out new and different offers and conversion events instead of optimizing the ones you have that are already working well. Let’s break down an example.
Let's say you want to generate an additional $50k in your business this month. What many businesses would do is look at putting out a new offer or doing a new launch event. But here is something else to consider…
If your core offer in your business is worth $10,000 and you close 50% of the people who book a sales call with you, all it would take is booking 10 more calls to bring in an extra $50k.
Focusing on getting 10 more calls is a whole lot simpler and less resource-intensive than creating, launching, and delivering something new.
There are numerous opportunities to optimize what you’re doing at different stages of your funnel to significantly improve your results, broaden your impact, and increase your profit margin.
The reality is that if you keep putting out new and different offers instead of optimizing the ones you already have, you actually slow down your results and work way harder than you need to, not to mention it can be confusing for your clients and overwhelming for your team. It also:
- Can be challenging to coordinate fulfillment, and customer experience can suffer
- Is time consuming (and usually expensive) to market and sell
- Results in a LOT of systems to create and maintain to get consistent results
- Makes it harder to predict revenue and cash flow
- Leads to missed optimization opportunities which leaves money on the table
What to do about it
Doing less things better is what will actually allow you to scale faster and this includes leaning out what isn’t working and doubling down on and optimizing what is.
There is an important time and place for new and different… but it is typically after you’ve fully optimized what’s working when you want to scale sustainably.
Are you getting the maximum results from your existing offers? Social media channels? Marketing efforts? Evaluate your offers and your activities to identify areas where small optimizations can lead to massive results. Double down on those areas before taking on something new.
If you would like to partner with someone to eliminate unnecessary complexity and simplify and scale your coaching, consulting, or service based business, that's our specialty.
Book a complimentary strategy call to see how we can support you in simplifying and scaling your business and let’s eliminate waste and find the hidden time and money in your business together. We offer both done-with-you and done-for-you solutions based on your unique needs.
Explore the other 10 ways that small businesses are leaving massive amounts of time and profit on the table in their business in our 10-part series here.
by Crista Grasso
Crista Grasso is the go-to strategic planning expert for leading global businesses and online entrepreneurs when they want to scale. Known as the "Business Optimizer", Crista has the ability to quickly cut through noise and focus on optimizing the core things that will make the biggest impact to scale a business simply and sustainably. She specializes in helping businesses gain clarity on the most important things that will drive maximum value for their clients and maximum profits for their business. She is the creator of the Lean Out Method, 90 Day Lean Out Planner, and host of the Lean Out Your Business Podcast.
