If you want to solidify your business, invest in a good CFO. But if you want to grow your revenue rapidly, invest in reinventing your business strategy.

Try these methods:

Avoid wasting time and money on creating ideas without first identifying a pain point. Your first port of call is in identifying the bottlenecks. Identify the components that are frustrating the customers you already have or did have before they left. 

The clues are everywhere. Ask what takes up most of your time in clarifying a customer query? What do customers get most confused about? What complaints do people make? Why?

Eliminating bottlenecks can free up an additional revenue by eliminating customer frustration, increasing referral rates, and repeat customers.

Test that you’ve found a problem people want to have solved. Similarly, avoid building any new product, process, or service until you can validate that the bottleneck you've identified is a problem that people want solved. 

Validate by quantifying how many people are experiencing the pain. For websites, you can use heat maps to see where customers are spending too much time, and customer service logs or FAQ's are other ways to validate how commonly the issue occurs.

Don’t fall into the trap of just doing the bare minimum to solve the bottleneck. With just another 10 minutes of brainstorming, you might create that game changing idea he suggests. 

Think of the following prompts to make the solution more remarkable.

• Could you substitute an element or component?
  
• What if you were to combine a new feature?
  
• What if you were to add or remove a part?
  
• What if you were to multiply or magnify a feature or reduce the size of a task or feature?

We tell entrepreneurs and business owners, in particular, to put time into testing that their solution works as soon as possible— either by testing a key component or small components.

This is contrary to what many advisors typically recommend. You don't want to waste time and money building a complete solution straight off the bat.

Pick the critical component and see the most vital piece you need to test, I.e., what has the most significant implication if you get it wrong and what you are most uncertain about.

For example, testing your website's color scheme would come after testing that your new landing page copy works.

You can find out before having to build your whole solution whether people have an appetite to pay for it or not.

You can create a demo video explaining the solution and then create a sign-up for the new product.

You could make some inexpensive social media advertisements with a link to a landing page with your future solution and a sign-up page with a 'Buy Now' button.

The more people clicking on the buy now button validates your market's willingness to purchase your solution.

You can build your community and customer numbers early on by creating a beta release solution.

That means that people will be aware there are likely to be a few bugs in your solution, but they get a discount rate, and they get to feel as if they are part of a cutting edge solution.

Meaning you get income faster and a strong customer community to support and spread the word about your new solution.

We’ve seen previous clients waste millions of dollars in promotion when they could have had a far more substantial impact by promising a change and having a conversation around their solution. 

Customers are overloaded with promotional information and more interested in having a conversation that focuses on the customer and how your solution can change their circumstances.

Authenticity and sharing your cause can significantly impact and create cut-through all the noise so that your new solution gets genuinely noticed.

Authenticity and sharing your cause can significantly impact and create cut-through all the noise so that your new solution gets genuinely noticed.

While CFO's and accountants can add great value they can only go so far.

Reinvention can be as simple as having seven steps to focus on:

1. Find the bottleneck
   
2. Don't build a solution to a problem that no one wants to be solved.
3. Solve the problem creatively. 
4. Test the solution.
5. Make sure the market is willing to pay for it.
6. Create/ build a community through a beta release/ discount.
7. Spread the word through promising change.

Which is your favourite❓

Nils


I hope this helps and please let us know how you go. Why not check out our new Reinvention Club too.

Cheers,
Nils

Nils Vesk - Ideas with Legs

CEO, Keynote speaker, Consultant, Father, Husband, Extreme Sportsman