Everyone faces problems with their businesses growing. (More specifically, everyone faces problems with their businesses not growing.)
There will always be a time– no matter what phase or space you’re in– when you see things start to stall out.
Maybe you’re in the startup phase, and you had a bit of traction but now you’re slowing down. Maybe you’re well into the six-figure range, or mid-six-figure range, and you’re just not growing as fast as you thought you would at this point.
I’ve gone through the same thing myself.
That’s why I know that no matter your circumstances, there are three main reasons why things start to stall, get stuck and end with your growth coming to a slow but sure stop.
1. You’re not prospecting enough.
This can apply whether you’re in the products space or the services space.
If you’re not out there having conversations with your audience, they won’t know who you are, why they should buy from you or how you can best serve them.
(If you’re unsure of that yourself, let my team and me know.)
Simply put, even if your brand itself is getting out there, you can’t grow your business without having enough conversations with your ideal customers.
Ask yourself this:
What sort of time are you investing in your business? How much time is your team investing in your business? During that time, how much of it are you dedicating to putting enough focus and time into prospecting? If you’re not sure about that, or you know you aren’t investing enough of your time into prospecting, it gets easier and easier to get off track and have your pipeline dry up.
Say that you’re in the products space. How does this apply to you?
Having conversations with your audience when you’re selling products instead of just services comes down to having conversations with your audience about marketing, and getting them to engage with you.
You have to be available when they come to your site and want to live chat with you. You have to be available when it comes to emailing your list, and replying back when people email you.
Because at the end of the day, your industry aside, nothing’s gonna happen if there’s not a relationship.
Take a good, honest look at your time. Evaluate your time and your team’s time. Are you where you should be with your prospecting efforts?
2. You’ve lost touch with your audience.
You no longer know what they need from you. You no longer know how you can best serve them and meet those needs.
I was talking to a client recently who’s in the process of rolling out a new product.
If this client stays on track, it could become a million-dollar product within the next five years.
I explained to them that I’ve faced the same opportunities before, too.
But I had also gone wrong a few times in the past.
I hadn’t blocked out time to talk to my existing customers and new prospects about new products I’d wanted to explore. I hadn’t gotten in touch with their needs and desires.
You should be interviewing your clients at least every six months.
Ask them what challenges they’re dealing with. Ask them what’s been going on in their lives and businesses.
If you do, you can stay abreast of any ongoing changes in your industry. Then, you won’t get a nasty surprise when you find out that things have changed, and that your new product launch might not be as well-received as it would have been before.
3. You’re stuck on some kind of vanity metric. In other words, something that might feel good for your ego or some sort of shiny object is distracting you.
This one’s hard to avoid.
Every single day, in this modern world that we live in, there’s a brand new tool, platform or opportunity coming out that could potentially help you. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of distractions that can easily take you away from your focus.
While those things might seem super cool when you first hear about them, they’re also taking your attention away from getting you the results you need to serve your audience.
There’s this one person in my circle who, over the past several months, has tried six different messaging platforms and private social media platforms. At the end of the day, it was all a waste of time.
Why?
Because their focus should have been on how to get more people onto their existing platform and use that correctly.
Instead, they’ve been putting all their energy into this new approach that wasn’t focusing on a better customer experience; it wasn’t focusing on something that would actually add value to their audience’s experience, their business or their overall growth and success.
So, if you need help growing your business with effective marketing that’s not about vanity metrics, reach out to us at BME. We’d love to help you.
To your success,
Gabe
P.S. This is something I got into on the Content is Profit podcast last week, where I’m excited to say I joined my good friends, the BIZBROS, to talk about the skills you need to build a successful business, the skills you need to keep up with that business’s growth and everything in between.
I’ll talk more about this later this week, but you can check out the episode by clicking here. (Don’t forget to subscribe to Content is Profit, too– they have a ton of valuable lessons that you need to succeed in turning your content into a profitable machine.)