Before You Add Anything to Your Business, Find the Bottleneck
When something in your business isn’t working as well as you’d like, it’s very tempting to start looking for what you can add.
Another marketing channel…a different offer…more content. There’s always something you could be doing (which is part of what makes running a business so easy to complicate).
But before you add anything, make sure you’re solving the right problem in the first place.
Because you can throw a ton of time and money at the wrong part of a business when you haven’t figured that out first.
Start with what’s actually happening
Let’s say you want more clients, and your immediate thought is that you need more leads.
Maybe you do. But if you already have a healthy number of qualified people coming into your business and very few are becoming clients, I’m much more interested in what’s happening once they get on a sales call.
Are you actually talking to the right people? Are they understanding the value of the offer? Is there a particular point where you seem to lose them?
Now, if you look at your numbers and realize you close a very healthy percentage of qualified prospects and simply aren’t talking to enough of them, that points to a lead generation problem.
The goal in both cases is more clients. What I’d work on first is completely different.
Look for the bottleneck
The next time you’re tempted to add something to your business, get specific about the result you’re trying to change first.
Look at how people are finding you and what happens once they do. Pay attention to where things seem to slow down or fall apart.
Find the bottleneck. Then decide what to do about it.
You may discover you need more leads. Or you may realize the real problem is converting the ones you already have.
P.S. Before you add another lead generation strategy, make sure it’s the one you actually need. My free Lead Generation Strategy Workbook will help you figure out where to focus your efforts.
Comments