How To Create Healthy Growth In Your Business
September 30th, 2016 // 10:09 am @ Scott Manning
Let’s talk about the things a business does to create buyers that are unhealthy for your business, for referrals, for profits and for long term sustained growth.
Two major things come to mind and I see most often.
1st … is the obvious … discounting, running ‘specials’ and motivating people to buy for reasons other than the merits of your products or services.
Now, in all fairness, there are businesses built around this approach but I’m confident there are none that are reading this and hanging out here with me.
You will never win the volume battle as an entrepreneur where you constantly need more and more and more customers in order to grow your profits.
What happens when you discount is you get more people to say yes (which requires more overhead and more customer service and more of everything to deliver), yet you give up all of your profits on the discount.
There are places where it strategically makes sense. Usually in trial offers or in step-up selling where you are engaging prospects by lowering the barrier to get them off the block.
But it never works long term. If you can’t convert people in your sales funnel without discounts, then you have no sales funnel. Discounting to dig deeper into the funnel has a place but the better question and more admirable challenge to overcome is never needing to dig deeper into the funnel and the pipeline. Focus on growing and leveraging your business at the top by getting more A-Customers so discounting is not needed.
The bigger issues with discounting is what it does to the customer, client, patient psyche and perception of your business and of your value.
Discounting has three trickle down implications:
1. It trains buyers to wait for a deal
2. It causes skepticism in their minds of why prices where higher to begin with
3. It shows your willingness to deal and negotiate in the first place, and they don’t separate the initial offerings from future offerings
Not to mention that they simply lower their own mental and intrinsic value of your products, services, experiences, etc because they see that you have too.
The next big place where I see businesses become infested with unhealthy customers and growth that could prove to be either short lived or fleeting or unstable for long term profitability … is when you rush the sales cycle and try to coerce prospects into becoming buyers before they are ready. Often this takes getting them with some compromise, either price or comprehensiveness of service.
This can be good, in some cases, but most of the time when you have to do anything in desperation or haste with your sales cycle and prospect nurturing process, you are going to come out with the short end of the stick.
You may feel like it was a victory today and you may receive some quick cash but your customers will often wake up with remorse or they will feel the sense of being rushed through something that lacked a genuine progression.
I’m not just talking about skipping steps or tricking people into a purchase. It can be for any single interaction or touch point in the process.
Obviously you should be deliberate and influential in your sales process and customer experience where the point is to accelerate their decision in a healthy way. I have given you many steps, tools, methods to do this over the years.
I always ask the question: would you enjoy buying from you? What would it feel like, would you be excited, educated, tell others about it, do it again?
You really have to see your process through your customers’ eyes and all senses really. And you should think about why someone doesn’t move forward.
The right people anyhow. Why did they require a discount or a push or anything else?
It’s not about getting them all. It is about getting the right ones. You may not realize it until its too late; until you have to keep discounting deeper or until you need a multiple of the number of new customers in order to maintain your profitability let alone growth.
All things to think about, assess and strategically figure out for all of your customer streams.
Avoid these two big traps and you will see healthy, profitable growth in your business. These customers will multiply their value by repeat purchases and the referrals they bring to you.
It’s not just about getting to “yes” and the money; it’s about building healthy growth through healthy customers through a healthy sales, nurturing, educational, and converting process.
Category : Blog
