Everyone wants their business to hit its first one million dollars in sales, but unfortunately, only 4% of companies make that goal today. Is it impossible to make it to $1 million? No! Is that easy? Perhaps yes, but you need to follow a set of strategies.
The first stage to start making constant and consistent progress is to know where you stand in your business, which means:
- Understanding what stage are you at
- What are the limiting beliefs that hold you back
- What are the key factors that will help you move forward to the next sales bracket
Having awareness about all these questions will give you more confidence, and it will allow you to take action and prioritize the appropriate factor.
Here is a viable strategy organized into steps that will help your startup easily earn its first 1 million dollars!
Search for a product fit for the market
The first step is to find a product that is market-fit. Although you have jumped to start your business, the overall business plan may not be as clear as you would think. The scariest part might be that you are not making enough money! If you focus your energy on developing a product that consumers actually want and a business that consumers want to purchase from, then you’re one step closer to reaching your big money goals.
Irrespective of what difficulties you will have along the way that could distract you, don’t let it happen and focus on your end goal.
Also when talking about your business, do not fake your success. The goal is to attract loyal and returning customers and being honest, transparent, and goal-oriented has proven the most successful.
According to experts, the first stage of a successful business is to provide value to attract more customers. Work for free and offer discounts where possible, and it will help you create case studies, trust, reliability, and then a track record of the results. Always focus on the lowest hanging fruit, i.e. ask your friends and family for referrals.
Take your business from part-time to full-time
Once you made it out of the first stage, you are now able to get customers and have a business reputation! Congrats! Although you are advancing and gaining momentum, so is your workload. At this stage, you are more likely to be overwhelmed by doing all the administrative work and making the business decisions.
Bringing staff in or hiring an employee to help you manage the workload of your growing business can be really challenging for many reasons. You understand that you need help or to have someone work for you, but you are hardly paying yourself as it is. You are also not sure how long the steady stream of sales and referrals will continue. It is also quite hard to let someone into your business because there are no established repeatable systems in place.
The critical thing to focus on to graduate from this stage is to push through. Experts recommend spending 70 percent of your time on sales-generating activities. Although you will feel uncomfortable, if you put in the right efforts you will be more confident. You should probably bring in a virtual assistant first and then potentially a full-time employee in a short period of time as things start to fall into place. As your reputation and expenses increase over time, you should also increase the pricing discounts you offered for the first customers, so that you can retain a loyal consumer base.
Craft a scalable business model
Once you can make it to stage three, your goal is now to craft a scalable business model. Owning a business, whether it is still growing or very profitable, can be extremely overwhelming. You most definitely have to wear many hats and continue to make the tough decisions, whether it’s related to your sales, cutting costs, or even keeping your employees accountable. Having support you can trust is essential to growing your business and being able to communicate your expectations to your employees or team is vital. At this stage, your workload may still be inconsistent and keeping company morale is also a necessary skill. You should focus on creating training courses and defining each job description to effectively communicate accountability and create an open and clear workflow to help your business run smoothly and efficiently.
Now it is essential to make a significant effort to transform your referral basis to a scalable and predictable source of sales and leads. Advertise your services, so that you can bring in sales from different areas. A digital marketing agency in Los Angeles can assist you with targeted advertising. Shifting from a referral base to advertising is one of the most challenging transitions in your business.
Continue your efforts to spend at least 70 percent of your time generating sales. At this stage, you will be required to set up systems and basic tracking to manage your team and sales in your new scalable business model.
Build infrastructure and systems for growth
If you have already made it stage four, it’s time to start investing in infrastructure to establish a better system. Until now, most of your business decisions are based on emotions and logical thinking because you have not established any metrics and tracking to be able to make numbers-based decisions.
Using your scalable business model, focus on creating standard operating procedures, job descriptions, and writing key performance indicators for each role.
If you have all these things in place, you will be in a position to hire more people and increase your capacity. You should focus on improving your sales and lead tracking at this stage. Optimize your sales model to boost the amount of revenue that you generate per client. As you grow overall, you will be able to hire more sales representatives and advertise your products. You can consult a digital marketing agency in Los Angeles to make sure that you have the best ROI.
Scale your team to the next level and have proven systems
Scale your team and proven methods. While you are at this stage, the only thing that can limit your growth is technology and your employees. Here, cash flow is still a stressor because you are hiring experts, and you are investing in technology and infrastructure. Using these resources will allow you to destress because you’ll have a clear idea about what you need to do and where your business can go from here.
When you are at the fifth stage, focus on hiring and training more team members. It means that your time will be spent on management. At this stage, you will have to improve technology to more advanced tracking and reporting. Finally, you will have the opportunity to scale and accelerate what you are working on.
Follow the framework mentioned above to learn where you are at in your business. If you don’t work strategically, there is a higher chance that you will give up without realizing how close you are to achieving your goal. If you need help growing your business, reach out to a digital marketing agency in Los Angeles!
