Many clients want to know how to get their business to the next level.
Today’s video is going to focus on how to get your business from those early stages into that next tier of growth.
If you’ve hit a plateau in your business, this video is for you.
What Causes A Plateau In Business Growth?
Whenever I’m looking at a big problem like this, I’m always trying to break it down into its component pieces.
I find this is a nice way to see which of the component pieces is contributing the largest amount to the problem.
If you have hit a growth plateau, there are two main areas you want to check to see where the problem lies.
Diagnostically we either have a
- Sales Problem
- Capacity Problem.
1.) Sales Problem
If you have a Sales Problem, that means that you have the Capacity to be doing a lot more work, but you’re sort of sitting around twiddling your thumbs. You would just need to be selling that additional work.
If you were to sell twice as much work, you could deliver on twice as much work, which means your business would basically double.
That would mean you have a Sales Problem.
That’s a pretty common one (earlier on in business especially.)
2.) Capacity Problem
If you have a Capacity Problem, that means that you’re selling more work than you can get to.
You are getting backlogged and have to say “no” to jobs, or you’re saying “yes” to jobs, you should be saying “no” to and you’re making people upset.
This would be a Capacity Problem.
Diagnosing The Main Problem Causing Your Business Growth To Plateau
If you’re at a plateau, you have either a Sales Problem or a Capacity Problem, (or sometimes a little bit of both).
Typically Sales Problems and Capacity Problems stair-step back and forth.
Looking at your business, at your plateau, the first step is figuring out whether you have a Sales Problem or a Capacity Problem.
I’ll briefly cover if you have each one, what type of a solution you’re looking for and then I’ll wrap this video up.
Fix Your Sales Problem To Get Past The Plateau In Your Business Growth
If you have a Sales Problem, make sure you are spending time doing Sales activities.
Make sure you are taking the time to improve your sales abilities.
Moving Out Of Our Comfort Zone
Most entrepreneurs love the Capacity, the fulfillment side of things.
They love doing what they do. That’s why they started their business to begin with -delivering a wonderful product or service. That gets them super excited.
But they did NOT launch their business to become a salesperson or a marketing person, and because of that, this area can get totally neglected.
We have this idea, based on a fear of rejection that “What I do is wonderful. Customers will come to me and want to buy what I have because it’s so great.”
This idea CAN be true to a degree, but now you’re powerless. You are waiting for them to come knocking on your doors with their money saying “Hey, will you take my money?”
If you have lots of time and patience, you could take that approach, but I would suggest a more active approach where you’re in more control of your own destiny to increase your chances of success, which means actually taking the time to develop
- Sales Process,
- Marketing Processes,
- Outreach,
- and putting time in your schedule every week to do those things.
Example:
A large number of entrepreneurs would answer “no” if I asked them the following question.
“If you had three hours every week set aside devoted to Sales and Marketing, do you know what would actually even be doing in that time?”
Is this you? Would your answer be “no”?
What NOT To Do
This Marketing/Sales space is extra confusing. It is full of gurus and products that don’t work and course creators trying to sell you on their ideas, books, or programs.
There are a lot of things that are being sold to you that you “should be doing” or “could be doing” that don’t necessarily need to be your focus.
- Digital Marketing,
- SEO,
- Sales Tactics,
- Cold Calls,
- Buying Lists,
- and more…
All those potential distractions can really get you bound up and confused.
Spoiler Alert: Most of the time you DON’T need to buy anything or pay for anything to make your sales and marketing work. The above list is just a series of distractions for many businesses.
Develop YOUR Approach For Sales
You just need the
- right skills,
- the right tactics,
- and the right approach.
To solve a Sales Problem in your business, spending time to learn the art of salesmanship is going to be key.
Once you have that skill, it goes into your back pocket. It stays with you forever. It will pay dividends over and over again.
This is an investment that you CANNOT afford to not make in yourself.
Fix Your Capacity Problem To Get Past The Plateau In Your Business Growth
If you have a Capacity Problem, meaning that you’re selling more work than you can get to basically there are a few ways to approach that.
1.) Find Efficiencies
Typically, first and foremost I’m looking at where can I find efficiencies within what I am already doing.
Usually, we started doing things a certain way. We just kept doing them that way because thinking about it is hard. It takes a lot of energy and effort.
What we did historically has been working to provide our services.
Rechecking how we’re doing things though, we have a chance to really make some improvements.
We can go from taking 20 hours to get things done to getting that same amount of things done in 10 hours.
Think about that.
You doubled your possible income just by making things more efficient!
That is the number one opportunity – to find Efficiencies in what you are already doing.
2.) Adjust Your Pricing Model
Number two (if you’ve already maximized how efficiently you deliver your service), you can look at your Business Model.
If you are having more people come to you than you can actually serve, sometimes it means it’s time to look at raising your prices.
If your prices are higher, fewer people might come to you.
Maybe a segment of your current customers is coming to you because you’re underpriced in the market. Maybe you have positioned yourself as someone who delivers a wonderful quality service at a bargain basement price.
If you were to raise your prices it is likely fewer “price-focused customers” would come to you and more “value-focused customers” would keep using you.
Out of that reduced customer base, you will have people who will be paying you more money and you will have very happy customers.
This means that you’ll do the same amount of work, but your profit has gone up by quite a bit and you’re still delivering a great quality of service.
You’ve put up appropriate hurdles because you can’t help everybody anyways so you might as well focus on those who can pay you the money that allows you to stay in business.
Evaluating your pricing could be a key step.
3.) Add Employees
The final area if you are looking at a Capacity Problem is looking at hiring your first (or additional) help.
This is always an interesting hurdle to cross.
Many business owners eventually need to make this leap and they’re kind of stuck in this purgatory here.
They need to master the skills of how to
- hire
- onboard
- train
- develop ongoing help
- handle managers
- and how to keep scaling in that way.
But sometimes you’re to a level that is the next problem to figure out.
This is a skill that takes quite a bit of time to put together, but much like the sales skill it is nonnegotiable for the ongoing growth of your business that you figure it out.
Once you have it, it’s in your back pocket you can use it over and over again, within any business and any iteration of your business going forward.
Conclusion
So if you’ve hit a growth plateau, there is a good chance you should focus on the Sales Problem or the Capacity Problem.
If things are pretty even pick out one or the other to do first.
I would say if they’re pretty dead even I recommend focusing on Sales first.
This is a lot easier psychologically because once you are successful you have more work than you can get to. This means that when you have expanded your Sales abilities and it is time to add more Capacity it seems less scary (since you have the work piled up and ready to be done), versus starting with Capacity and adding more people and hoping to get the work sold so you can afford to pay them.
Hopefully, this post gave you an idea of what to do if your business is at a plateau and you’re trying to get to that next level in business.
Thanks for reading and have a great day.
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