There is a question I get every week, and it is one of the hardest — not because it is complex, but because it cannot be answered in that form: "what do I do to grow the business?"
That question is like going to a doctor and saying "I'm unwell, give me medicine." With no symptoms, no tests and no history, any answer is a guess.
Why can't that question be answered?
Because "grow" means completely different things depending on your situation. A business whose sales are flat needs one thing; a business with good sales and no profit needs something else entirely; a business overloaded and unable to deliver needs a third.
And any general advice in those situations is at best useless, and at worst harmful — like telling someone with a delivery problem to increase their advertising.
The questions to ask instead
- How many new customers came this month, and from where? That establishes whether your problem is reach.
- How many asked and did not buy, and why? That establishes whether your problem is the offer, the price or trust.
- How many customers came back and bought again? That establishes whether your problem is the product or the experience.
- How much net profit do I make per customer? That establishes whether your problem is pricing or cost.
- How many more customers could I serve right now? That establishes whether your problem is capacity.
Those five answers locate the problem in half an hour. Without them, any growth plan is guesswork.
The problem is not always marketing
Most people asking that question expect a marketing answer: get on a platform, increase the ads, run a campaign.
And in half the cases I have seen, the answer was not marketing at all. It was pricing, or the choice of segment, or response speed, or a company offering many services and being excellent at none.
A number changes the conversation
The moment there are numbers on the table, the discussion moves from opinions to decisions.
Without numbers the meeting becomes: "I feel people don't see us" versus "no, I think the price is high." With numbers it becomes: "we have a hundred enquiries and five buy — so the problem is after the enquiry, not before it."
And another maddening one: "what do you think?"
When someone shows me a design or a plan and asks "what do you think?" with no context, the answer is worthless. My opinion on what? Compared with what? And what was the goal?
The better question: "we want to reach X, this is what we did, what might get in the way?" That question gives you an answer you can act on.
How do you ask a question that gets a useful answer?
- State the current situation. Your numbers and your problem in detail.
- State the goal. What you want to reach and in what period.
- State the constraints. Your budget, your time and your team.
- Ask for a step, not a plan. "What is the first thing I should do?" beats "what should I do?"
The same principle with your team
A general question produces a general answer. If you ask your team "what should we do to improve sales?" you will get random suggestions.
But if you ask "our enquiry-to-sale rate is five percent, what do you think stops people?" you will get specific observations from people who see the reality every day.
In short
"What do I do to grow?" has no answer. Turn it into specific questions about your numbers: new customers, conversion rate, repeat purchase, profit per customer, and your capacity.
The answers will tell you exactly where the problem is, and you will usually find the fix is simpler and cheaper than a new advertising campaign.
This is part of a series on customers and the offer — which also covers knowing your audience, and keeping your customers.