In this article, we share six of the most shocking statistical observations from Westernston’s 12-Minute Business Diagnosis that has been taken by entrepreneurs across the world in dozens of different sectors and industries. If you have not yet taken this quiz in order to dianose this business, you may do so here.
Some of these statistics may hit very close to home. Our intent in sharing these statistics is not to demotivate you. Rather, it is to demonstrate how easy it could be to stand hard and shoulders apart from your competitors who are also most likely making the same mistakes. Statistically speaking, of course.
In other words, business excellence doesn’t need to be hard or complicated. You just need to go the extra mile. And that’s not so hard either, as you will see.
So, without further ado, let’s dive right into it…
We asked business leaders how consistently they followup with their leads (prospective customers who have not yet bought).
In many cases, entrepreneurs pay good money in order to generate a list of prospective customers and clients. So these leads are paid for more often than not.
And yet, the results absolutely shocked us…
Poor follow-up is what nearly all small businesses offer.
That means that nearly 2 in three businesses fail to follow up with their prospective clients adequately… even though they may be paying good money for bringing in those leads in the first place.
Our reaction to that is… “huh?”.
It is baffling. One could argue it’s almost crazy. Why spend money on advertising when you’re not even going to follow-up with the people your advertising attracts?
And make no mistake…
You are paying money for advertising. Even if it is just in the form of the monthly rental you pay. Why, nobody wants to rent a space in the middle of a forest, even though rents could potentially be crazy low.
The Verdict:
Systemizing your follow-up could simply propel you ahead of nearly 65% of your competitors. Overnight. Just like that. It’s so easy. It’s just so fast.
And when you don’t follow-up with someone, they believe (with good reason) that you might be inadequately helpful if and when they become a customer and require support.
You know how they say bad habits die hard?
Well, most businesses aren’t just bad at following-up with prospective clients and leads. They’re also bad at following-up with existing customers and past clients. Which is where the bulk of their revenue ought to come from.
We asked business leaders how frequently does their business follow-up with their existing or past clients.
And this is how they answered…
Poor followup with customers and clients is also the norm just the same as with prospective clients and leads.
From what we can see… that is a WHOLE LOT of money being left on the table.
Nearly 80% of all small businesses follow-up very infrequently with their existing customers and clients.
Let’s rephrase that…
If you follow-up with your existing clients and customers…. people who actually know you, like you and trust you enough to have given you their money in exchange for your products and/or services…
How cool is that?
Like we said at the beginning of this article, business excellence is not hard to achieve. It just takes focus and intent.
Done right, continuity programs can create a stable and solid ongoing revenue stream for any business. And while so many entrepreneurs have told us “my business is different”… in almost every case, it is not only possible to have at least one (or more) continuity programs, it has also nearly always proven to be very profitable for them.
We asked entrepreneurs if their business has a recurring income component.
Here’s how they answered…
Small businesses just don’t “do” continuity well.
So 2 in 3 small businesses just don’t have anything that brings in recurring income.
And combined with those that have a recurring revenue program but don’t run it very well… you’re already up to 86.4%.
In other words…
And here’s the funny story…
Only 2.2% of all small businesses even have more than one recurring-revenue stream.
Let that sink in!
When asked if their business’ website consistently brings in new leads and clients, entrepreneurs said…
If your website doesn’t bring in leads, you might as well not have it.
That’s 70.5%.
70.5% of all small businesses either don’t have a website, or their website doesn’t help at all with getting new business.
In other words, they might as well not have it.
And therein lies your edge…
If you website merely receives traffic consistantly, youre within the top 30% of all small businesses.
Again, there’s your simple hack.
Focus on developing a functional website that actually gets used by your audience, and you’re well within the top 11.3%.
In the world of ecommerce, tracking is how you grow. It’s how you scale. Tracking your various metrics allows you to figure out what it is that’s bottlenecking your growth.
This much has been known since we started learning about e-commerce back in the early 2000’s right after the dotcom bust.
John Wanamaker famously said half of all advertising is wasted.
We actually disagree. We believe know way more than half of all advertising is wasted, simply because even today you target several million people in order to gain a few thousand clients and customers.
With that in mind, of course it is imperative to track your cost of acquiring new leads. The reality was shocking…
We asked entrepreneurs how well they actually knew their cost of acquiring leads.
Tracking is the first step in growth
So 72.7% have either no idea, or very rough aggregates.
Our team at Westernston was particularly shocked by this one. We had kind of expected the other ones, but this one was unexpected.
If we spend $10,000 on Facebook ads this week, we could tell you our CPL (cost per lead or cost of acquiring one lead on an average) by the city/state we targeted, broken down by advertisement creative used, broken down by demographics (ages, genders), broken down by interests and so on.
While we did not expect small business owners to have as much granular data as we (and by extension our clients) have… we did expect most entrepreneurs to choose, “I know my cost of acquiring a lead from each individual source. I know which sources work best for me, and which don’t work at all.”
Because otherwise, why even try various sources in the first place?
Very shockingly, only 27.3% chose that option.
Frankly, we are amazed how little you’d need to do to be tracking more than three-fourths of your competitors.
Sounds like we’re trying to deliberately dishearten you, doesn’t it?
We assure you that we really aren’t. We are just sharing what we have found…
Cashflow growth is a great indicator of your business’ health
If you take inflation into account (which isn’t exactly the same as the official statistics because of several factors that are beyond the scope of this article)… businesses that have cashflows that are growing very slowly are barely breaking even. And that’s 72.7% of all businesses.
This is in line with what we have all been observing in the real world.
This is just how compounding works.
This is what we mean when we say “Forces of Nature Are Either Growing Your Business Or Killing It.”
It’s like muscular atrophy. Your muscles can either grow (be in a state of hypertrophy) or shrink (state of atrophy). Your business is either ahead of the curve, or getting left behind.
So that’s it.
Your business can either be growing right now, or shrinking.
And the differentiators are almost all listed right here in this article.
That’s it. You’ll be well within the top 10% of all small businesses just by default. And that reflects into the cashflow growth soon enough automatically.
Like we said at the beginning of this article… it’s not hard. It’s not expensive either. It’s not particularly time-consuming. But it does position you ahead of most of your competitors.
We seriously recommend not making these mistakes that your competitors are likely making right now.
Until next time,
Team Westernston
Westernston is the world's leading business systems architecture firm.
We help our clients with systemizing their business' operations and growing their brand equity.
To this end, we provide tools, training and other work-product that help them stratgically achieve their objective(s).
We only work with a very small number of clients at any given point of time. Working with a client requires a lot of attention, focus and dedication on our part, which is why we have to be selective about who we work with.
Consequently, we only work with clients who control their own brand in its entirety. Which means, we do not work with franchise businesses, or with businesses that sell products that could be classified as commodities.
Westernston is world's leading Business Systems Architecture firm.
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