The question I get asked the most is “How do I get more customers?” The answer is rarely about marketing. Usually they are trying to scale up by doing more of the same. It’s like trying to reach higher without getting a bigger ladder.
The business owners who scale successfully find a bigger ladder and they climb that ladder.
Finding a bigger ladder
Your business grows to the capacity of your ability and your systems. It doesn’t matter how hard you reach, if you are on the top rung of your ladder, all you are doing is setting yourself up for a fall..
You need a bigger ladder.
This is a way of saying that you need to increase your skills as a business owner, beyond just being a technician delivering your service. You need to make getting more customers a major part of the work you do. In order to scale your business, you need to shift your thinking from being a service/product provider to being a marketer of that service/product.
You need to know what to do with your customers as you get them. You need to improve the way your business works. Scaling can only happen after you have designed your customer’s journey and put the pieces in place to make it smooth and effective.
Your bigger ladder looks like a clear path for your customers to follow and the processes in place for you to delight your customers
Climbing that ladder
Once you are poised to grow, you have to do the work of bringing in more customers. It doesn’t matter how high your ladder is, if you don’t climb it ( even if it is scary) you won’t get to the top.
You need to begin climbing.
This is a way of saying that you need to do the work. Try different strategies and measure your results. What works for one business may not work for another.
Climbing your ladder looks like telling the stories of your best customers and testing how and where that message lands.
What got you here won’t get you to the next level
To level up, you need to work on yourself and your business. You need to do the things that most people won’t do to get the results other people don’t get.
What’s something new you can do in your business to help you level up? How can you build yourself a bigger ladder?