Turn your money tap on

If you’re like most business owners I speak with, you would love a more predictable path when it comes to the flow of customers and the flow of money into your business.

In fact, I would have to say that eight out of ten businesses today, especially service based businesses, feel like they just can’t seem to get that breakthrough they’ve been looking for. You started in business because you wanted to make more money, and you wanted to have more time to do the things you love but instead you’re probably working harder than ever before, perhaps your staff get more time off than you do and sometimes getting a JOB seems a much more attractive option.

This not only describes the many business owners I speak with before they dive into one of our business growth programs, but this describes how my business used to be. That was until I learnt how to control eight key metrics in my business and turn my Money Tap On.

So, how do you bust through the invisible barrier in your business in regards to your income and everything you want to accomplish and more specifically, how do you turn the money tap on so you have a constant stream of leads and customers coming into your business?

In short, I’ve discovered there are eight essential elements or key metrics you’ve got to have in your business to ensure the money tap is flowing. These are critical to ensuring the pipeline feeding the tap is not blocked. When you turn your money tap on, you will put an end to the ‘feast and famine’ cycle in your business and have customers search you out rather than you operating in huntergatherer mode. You will also have more consistency of income, create leverage through automating the many repetitive processes and tasks in your business and you will maximise your time so you are in complete control to do what you want, when you want.

Imagine having a business where you will have a dependable consistent flow of leads and clients and where marketing and automation takes care of all the heavy lifting for you. No matter how far along your entrepreneurial path you are, one of the things we all want and dream of is an automated way for money to come in.

When there is a system to automate your income and to make sure money is coming in consistently, it gives you a degree of confidence and certainty.

Most business owners don’t know what it’s like to have a consistent stream of clients and income coming into their business, and if they do they seem to be leaking profits all over the place and leaving money on the table. This is the critical key – ensure you have a clear pipeline to your tap, and you know how to turn the tap on and off when you need it. Also, ensure there is a solid bucket to capture what comes through that tap so that nothingfalls through the cracks.

Let’s explore these eight key metrics and how you can make incremental shifts in each area. This will literally take your business to the next level with less stress, overwhelm and more clarity and confidence.

My personal business journey has been a very interesting one and over the period of time building my own and other six, seven and eight figure businesses, I’ve discovered that implementing a few metrics consistently can help you build momentum faster.

The first metric is ATTENTION. Essentially this is the number of people coming to your website, walking into your store or engaging with you on social media. They may not be opting in with you, or becoming a prospect, they are simply in your community but not yet a customer.

You know you have someone’s attention when they take an action toward you. They walk into your store or office; they call you or have a conversation with you or they click an ad, a link or engage with you in a Facebook group. The second metric is LEADS. Someone moves to becoming a lead when they raise their hand and express an interest in your offer. The third metric is CONVERSION RATES. In order to acquire a new customer, you must first capture a lead and then convert that lead into a customer.

The next two metrics that you must be aware of are TRANSACTION VALUE and the FREQUENCY OF PURCHASE – in other words the number of times a customer will buy from you throughout the course of one month or one year. It’s also important to look at your PROFIT MARGINS and the two most overlooked areas: REFERRALS and LIFETIME VALUE OF A CUSTOMER.

These metrics are relevant for all businesses regardless of whether you operate offline or online. To be honest, if you are not using these metrics online you are missing out. Whatever business you are in, it’s impossible to only have offline leads. Regardless of how you are getting leads today, an online component of being there when the customer is looking for you is going to increase your chances of building momentum and being successful. Take a look at your current business right now. What element are you more focused on in your business? Is it sales? Is it profit margins or is it your pricing? Some people want more leads, some want more sales, some are focusing on just doubling sales, which can put a lot of unnecessary pressure on you and make your efforts feel like a constant uphill battle.

When I look at most businesses they say “we need to make more money, we need to make more sales or we need to get our customers to buy more”. It’s a common theme and if you were to choose to double one area, most business owners would want to double sales. Let’s face it we only want to double leads because ultimately we want to double our revenue.

The challenge however is many businesses rely on just one method of generating income and doubling just one element is incredibility hard, especially when it comes to doubling sales. What enables businesses to double their business consistently with less effort is having a consistent focus on all key elements and not just one. When you focus on all key areas, doubling your business becomes an easier and more systematic process because you are focusing on increasing all elements of the business.

Let’s explore the scenario above and see how you can influence growth in your business simply by achieving a 10 per cent increase across each metric.

When you increase all the key elements by 10 per cent, you are ahead of the game and it’s not hard either.

Most people have a ZERO at any one of these elements. When you have a ZERO at any of these, you just can’t take your business to the next level.

When you are in control of these numbers, you are in total control of where you can take your business. This is because you MUST be committed to directing a certain percentage of your profits to buying your leads. If you don’t understand what a customer is worth to you and how to influence an increase in profits, you won’t be directing the correct percentage of profits to your marketing, and we have all heard the statement that the one who is willing to spend more to acquire a customer, wins. Of course, there are marketing metrics you must be aware of too but we will leave that for another time.

If you don’t have the ability to spend on your marketing – the competition will. Remember, marketing is an investment; it’s not something you spend money on. If your marketing just isn’t working for you, it’s time to make some changes – review the metrics, review the message or review who you are targeting. So we can confidently say the first step to turning your money tap on is to understand the eight key metrics. When you understand the metrics, you can then move onto building and turning on your money tap.

What is a money tap? It is the flow of the right people into your business.

So the first step of the money tap is target market. This is in direct alignment with the first key metric of Attention. It’s so easy to get in front of the right people when you know who your target market is.

Let me repeat that, you’ve got to know WHO your target market is. Who do you serve, whom do you help, whose problems do you solve? There’s no point grabbing the attention of 10,000 people when only 1000 people want what you sell or offer. So the question you must ask yourself is “How do I get more of the right people into my business and WHO am I targeting?”

The next is traffic source. Where do they hang out? So be sure you are asking yourself “Who are they and where are they?” This is the first place you can get your leads. It’s like fishing, first you have to find the right pond, then you have to have the right bait (a lead magnet); you’re almost guaranteed you will catch something if the fish are there. These days however, you don’t ever have to wonder if you’re at the right pond, you can select your pond.

Let’s move to the next step in the money tap, your lead magnet. A lead magnet is a high value giveaway; think about what can you give away that’s of high value. When I see a tap not working well, it’s usually because there’s no bucket in place to capture the leads. If you’re giving something away and you’re not capturing their details in some way, shape or form, you are leaving money on the table.

This means it’s an absolute must to have a Lead capture system in place. This allows you to build a relationship with them, which over time will lead them to becoming a customer. A great lead capture system must also be able to handle your follow up actions, automated messages and touch points. Let’s face it, we would never expect to be asked for our hand in marriage on the first date, so it amuses me as to why businesses expect prospects to make a decision to move forward at the first touch point. Tools like Infusionsoft or Active Campaign are sales and marketing CRM tools that can help you capture your leads and do the ‘behind the scenes’ education and nurturing to move your prospect down the tap into your bucket of high paying customers.

Your money tap consists of your lead attraction system, your lead capture systems and your lead conversion system. When you put these in place and working seamlessly and automatically in your business, you will have a constant stream of customers and money coming into your business; one that you are in control of, not the other way around.

Tania is the founder of Vision Alliance, a business growth consultancy. If you would like to learn more about how you can build and turn on the money tap in your business, Tania would be delighted to offer all readers of Business Franchise a free 30 minute business growth roadmap session.

Please call Tania on:

1300 76 49 20.