We have a big challenge in our one year vision of doubling our service customers. Our current customer base took five years to develop, and we’re halfway through the year.
A good vision clearly establishes how the world is different, but it doesn’t tell you how to get there. What you’re left with are riddles to solve. Like: how to do in six months what it took you five years to do?
Riddles like this prompt you to think differently about growth.
As it relates to us, to double our service customers we need 30 new customers for the year.
To do that:
- Assuming an inquiry to conversion rate of 25% (1 in 4 people who contact us buys) we would need 120 inquiries or 20 a month or roughly 1 per business day.
- If we converted 5% of people who viewed an offer to a sales inquiry, we would need 2,400 unique visitors or 400 a month (to an offer.)
400 possible monthly customers, of which 20 reach out, and of those 5 become customers.
For the new brand we’re building, we’re currently getting ~323 possible customers a month (fuzzy because we have multiple pages which might constitute an offer.)
What’s interesting is that though we’re not far off the target we haven’t been getting anywhere close to an inquiry a day. That means something is off with either my math or with our sales funnel.
Knowing that is the point of having a good vision.
When you make objectives concrete, it helps to bring clarity to what it would take to get there. It forces us to move beyond magical thinking and identify the mechanisms that make that future possible.
What’s your vision? What would it take to make it real?
Credit where credit is due, this question of, “What would it take?” is a key concept of Michaela Light’s approach.
Featured image of Oedipus & the Sphinx by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres used under public domain .