The Revenue Growth Habit

The Simple Art of Growing Your Business by 15% in 15 Minutes Per Day

Alex Goldfayn

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781119084068
• eBook ISBN: 9781119084044
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

800-CEO-Read Sales Book Of The Year for 2015 | Forbes 15 Best Business Books of 2015 | "The chapters, (46 of them in this 256 page book) are quick and concise, and it is easy to pick it up anywhere and find a nugget of easily actionable advice, but the kicker is that the actions he recommends are also quick and concise, so that we can accomplish them in the few bursts of spare time we all have left." – 800CEORead.com "Follow Goldfayn's brilliant advice and you will have an endless supply of customer testimonials, spontaneous referrals, and new business, and it will compel you to buy a beautiful fountain pen and stop obsessing over social media. His advice simply works." – Inc.com Grow your business by 15% with these proven daily growth actions

Do you have trouble finding time during your hectic day to grow your business? Is your company stalled because you are too busy reacting to customer problems? Do you lack the funds to jumpstart an effective marketing plan?

The Revenue Growth Habit gives business owners, leaders, and all customer facing staff a hands-on resource for increasing revenue that is fast, easy, and requires no financial investment. Alex Goldfayn, CEO of the Evangelist Marketing Institute, shows how to grow your organization by 15% or more in 15 minutes or less per day—without spending a penny of your money.

Forget about relying on social media. Posting on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn doesn't grow revenue, especially for business-to-business companies. The Revenue Growth Habit shows how to request and collect testimonials and how to communicate these testimonials to grow your business. You will discover how to write powerful case studies, ask for (and get!) referrals, grow your lists, and send a revenue-growing newsletter. Goldfayn also includes information for teaching your customer service people how to inform your current clients about what else they can buy from you. This proven approach revolves around letting your customers tell your story. There is nothing you can say about your products and services that is more effective than what your paying customers say.

How does it work? Each day, take one quick, proactive communication action that tells someone about how they'll be improved after buying from you. Choose from the 22 actions Goldfayn details in The Revenue Growth Habit. Each technique is fast, simple, and free. It only requires your personal effort to communicate the value of your product or service to someone who can buy from you. Personal communication—the key to the 22 action steps—will make your company stand head-and-shoulders above the competition.

Part One
The Simple Revenue Growth Process

1
Revenue Growth Is Fast, Simple, and Free

Today, I run a seven-figure revenue-growth consulting practice by myself, out of my home. It's a very successful business, and there are few sole proprietorships with zero employees at this level.

But not that long ago, I would go to bed praying that I could feed my family, and when it comes to prayers, I don't really know what I'm doing. I had just changed business models, and I was going through the process of learning how to consult. There were months when we were literally out of money. It was a painful, anxious, frightening time, seared into my brain. Frankly, it was my greatest fear coming true. I promised myself that if I got things turned around, I would never be in that position again.

And then I started developing and applying my Revenue Growth Habit—the mindset changes and quick behaviors that make up this book. The techniques laid out in these pages were designed for my clients. But, they also moved my business from the struggle to serious success.

The Revenue Growth Habit turned my business around quickly, and transformed it into the thriving consultancy I run today. I don't think about running out of money anymore, because I know that when a need for additional revenue arises, I can simply dial up the techniques in this book. They are like a rheostat, to be adjusted upwards and downwards, as needed.

These approaches have also grown the companies of dozens of clients by 10% to 20% in their first year with me. One client told me recently that his net profit is up by 100% as a result of our work together. Additionally, thousands of people in the audiences I speak to have successfully developed their own Revenue Growth Habit using just some of the techniques in this book.

I am sharing this with you not to be boastful. Rather, I want you to know that these are not just ideas. They are not merely concepts on the page, theories spoken from the stage. The mindset and behaviors I will teach you in this book have significantly grown thousands of businesses. Over the years, around the world, the Revenue Growth Habit has generated hundreds of millions of dollars of new revenue.

The best part? Growing your sales with my approaches is simple, free, and eminently doable. You can increase your revenue by 15% or more in 15 minutes a day, just like the subtitle of this book says, and the only investment that's required is a bit of your effort. I will tell you what to do. If you can give me 15 minutes a day, maximum, I will teach you how to dramatically grow your company.

Who This Book Is For

Although my direct clients are almost always owners of closely held companies worth between $5 million and $2 billion, The Revenue Growth Habit is for anyone who's interested in increasing sales: owners, CEOs, presidents, vice presidents, general managers, salespeople, marketers, and customer service professionals. Who can benefit from this book? Anyone who has a customer-facing job. Does your company have delivery drivers? They see customers, therefore, they can implement one or two of the techniques in this book to help grow your company. If you're an owner, share these principles with your teams. If you interact with customers in any capacity whatsoever—in person, on the phone, or even only by email—you will find many powerful approaches here to significantly grow your company's sales.

Your Today: Busy and Reactive to Customer Problems

I know you, and I understand you.

You're a business owner, executive, manager, or frontline staff member in sales, or customer service, or marketing.

You're extremely busy. You spend your days dealing with customers' concerns and complaints.

“My order is late! Where is it?!”

“You screwed it up. Get it right!”

“Are you serious?! That price is way too high!”

Customers never call when they're happy. Nobody ever calls to say, “Hey, great job, that was really well done, we really appreciate what you did there.” We only hear from people when something is wrong. They bring us their fires, place them upon our desks, and we must put them out immediately lest our eyebrows get singed. As soon as that fire is out, what happens? The next one comes along. “Here's MY fire, don't get burned!”

And so, you spend your days reacting to one such urgent concern after another. If you're lucky you squeeze in lunch at your desk or in your car, but it's probably overcooked by the day's fires.

Your days are reactive, but revenue growth is proactive work.

We must make time for it.

The good news : Revenue growth does not require hours daily. Or even an hour.

You can grow your organization by 15% or more in 15 minutes or less a day.

Do you have 15 minutes?

I do. My clients, the owners of 7-, 8-, 9-, and 10-figure firms do.

Do you?

Your Tomorrow: Proactively Growing Your Sales in 15 Minutes or Less Daily

If you've made it to this section, I'm assuming you've decided you have 90 seconds, or 3 minutes, but no more than 15 minutes a day to commit to growing your organization.

We'll use this time for the proactive work of communicating your company's value to people who can buy it. (That's my definition of marketing, by the way. Simple, right? More on this definition in Chapter 7.)

Each day, I'd like you to take one quick, proactive action that tells somebody something about how they'll be improved after they buy from you.

You can select any of the 22 actions listed in Part Three of this book.

Every one of these techniques is fast, because revenue growth does not require a lot of time.

These techniques are free, because revenue growth costs no money.

They're simple, because the simplest solution is almost always the right one, and the tools I'm going to arm you with are incredibly easy to execute.

These approaches require your personal effort, because personal communication is going the way of the BlackBerry. Personal communication helps you stand out.

These techniques are communications actions. They demand that you communicate your value to somebody who can buy it from you. For example: I will teach you how to request and collect testimonials. But more importantly, you will learn how to communicate these testimonials to grow your business. I will teach you how to write a powerful case study, but more importantly, I'll arm you with the best ways to communicate that case study. I'll also teach you how your customer service people, who take incoming calls all day, can inform your current customers about what else they can buy from you.

My approaches revolve around letting your customers tell your story. There is nothing you can say about your products and services that is more effective than what your paying customers say. So, in many of these revenue growth techniques, we quote your customers. We tell their stories, because as a part of this approach, they will have given us permission to do so. We will make clear how they have been improved since they've worked with you. And we will allow them to compare you to your competition. When we're done, the prospect will be thinking, “I want that too! How can I get that kind of value?”

We will not use social media as a tool because social media does not grow revenue. Listen to me carefully on this, especially if you are in a business-to-business market: You can be on social media if you'd like to be, but understand that it will not grow your business. Any revenue y...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction You Deserve More Revenue
• Download Revenue Growth Forms and Templates
• Part One: The Simple Revenue Growth Process
• Part Two: The Growth Mindset—Change Your Thinking, Grow Your Business
• Part Three: 22 Fast, Simple Techniques for Revenue Growth
• Part Four: Executing the Plan
• Appendix Workbook for Launching the Revenue Growth Habit
• Index
• End User License Agreement