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You want to grow your business.
But like all busy, successful business owners – you’ve got so much going on in your business, you’ve lost track of what’s working, what’s not, and where the biggest growth opportunities in your business are right now.
In this blog post, I’m going to take you through a simple exercise to unlock hidden revenue in your business…
Revenue that’s hiding in plain sight right now, ready for the taking.
We’ll do that by plugging the leaks in your sales process.
I’ll explain more about that in a minute. First, we need to do some groundwork to get started.
Set Your Target
The first thing you need to do is set a monthly revenue target. We need a target so we have an objective way to measure our success.
If you want to take this exercise even further, you should also set targets for:
- Annual revenue
- Annual net profit
- Average time spent working in your business each week
But for now, a monthly revenue target will work.
Assess Your Current Situation
Once you’ve set your target, the next step is to assess your current situation. This will give you clarity on what you need to accomplish to reach your target.
Monthly Revenue
Write down your current monthly revenue. If it fluctuates a lot, take the average of the last 3 months.
Customers Acquired Per Month
The next number you need is the number of customers acquired every month. If your business sells a recurring subscription, include those too.
Leads Generated Per Month
The last number you need is the number of leads your business generates each month on average.
Traffic and Revenue Sources
Now that you’ve got your current numbers, it’s time to get clear on where those leads, customers, and revenue are coming from.
Write down all of your traffic and revenue sources, and ideally, try to rank them in order from most effective to least effective. (A big part of what makes this exercise so valuable is simply having clarity on everything in your business.)
Traffic and revenue sources might include:
- Organic search engine traffic
- Interviews and guest posts
- Affiliates and referrals
- Digital advertising
- Email marketing
- Social media
Focus on the top 2-3 sources for your business.
Current Sales Process
Your sales process is the series of steps a person has to take to become a paying customer. Some businesses might have multiple sales processes, but most businesses tend to have one primary sales process.
For example, a client service business might use a webinar funnel as their main sales process, as illustrated below.
An ecommerce business might have a sales process that looks like this.
Or you could have a retail business with an extremely simple sales process.
Whatever the case is for your business, take a minute to map out your sales process step-by-step from beginning to end.
Run the Numbers
Once you’ve outlined your sales process, now you want to run the numbers to find the leaks.
In between each step in your sales process, there’s a gap where people will either decide to move forward or drop out.
You want to get the numbers for each step, as shown below.
We’re looking for the gaps where the biggest number of people drop out because those are the biggest (and most immediate) opportunities to unlock hidden revenue.
However, the goal is to close the gaps between every step.
You can see in the example above that the biggest leak in this sales process is the number of people who attend the webinar and then complete an application – so this is the area you would want to address first.
Close the Gaps
The way we plug the leaks in your sales process is by adding something in the gaps that convinces people to move forward and take the next step.
My favorite tool for most businesses is an automated email sequence. They’re quick and easy to set up, super effective, and they don’t require any ongoing time, money, or energy to manage.
You might also use SMS, phone calls, in-person follow-up, or anything else that makes sense for your specific business.
Why This Matters
Looking back at your traffic and revenue sources – once you’ve spent the money to acquire leads, that money is gone forever. The profit comes from the number of leads you turn into paying customers.
The more you can close the gaps (or plug the leaks) in your sales process, the higher your ROI is from your marketing investment.
Here’s an example of how this might play out:
Bringing It All Together
As you continue to close the gaps in your sales process, you’ll want to track the changes in performance at each step.
When you run the numbers again, it might look something like this:
How does that impact your monthly revenue and number of acquired customers?
You should be generating significantly more profit from your marketing investment now, and you should be able to accurately predict the ROI of every $1 you spend.
Now that your sales process is optimized and you’re squeezing as much profit as possible from your current lead generation, the next step is to increase the number of leads you’re generating.
That usually just means increasing the output on your top 1-3 traffic and revenue sources.
And you can also apply this same strategy to increase the effectiveness of traffic and revenue sources as well.
Want to Dive Deeper?
This one exercise alone can have a huge impact on your business.
However, everything outlined in this blog post is only 1 step of a 5-step exercise I take all new clients through when we first start working together.
And right now, I’m giving everyone access to a free video training that takes you through all 5 steps.
I call it “The Download” because the main purpose is to take all of the stuff that’s cluttering your mind (and cluttering your business) and to download it onto a sheet of paper so you can get crystal clear on what’s working, what’s not working, and where the immediate opportunities are to increase revenue in your business right now.
If you found this blog post remotely useful, I definitely encourage you to check out this free on-demand training because you’ll get to dive much deeper and have a much more holistic view of your business.
Even better, you’ll walk away with a clear plan of attack to significantly grow your business in less time.
