The 4 Biggest Profit Leaks in Your Business (and How to Stop Them)

As a new entrepreneur, almost all of your time and energy is focused (and, rightfully so) on acquiring customers. And, as you get them, you begin to split your focus between serving these new customers, and continuing to acquire new ones.

Here's what most people don't realize: once you do acquire customers, there are critical, concentrated efforts that need to happen within that relationship to keep your business sustainable and profitable. And because so many business owners don't capitalize on these things, they are losing massive amounts of income.

But with a little bit of time, energy and focus, you can start seeing immediate results. So today, I want to talk about the four biggest profit leaks that are likely impacting your bottom line as a business owner, and how you can address them now to increase your income immediately.

I'm not talking about front end acquisition or top-line revenue here. We're talking about money that you can be making on work that you already did: thousands of dollars in take-home income that should be hitting your bank account from customers that you have already won. But if we don't handle things the right way, you're missing out.

#1: Inactive customers.

Past customers will come back and spend money with you. But, most small businesses do absolutely nothing to stay in touch with their past customers and reactivate them.

People buy from service based businesses in a cyclical and habitual way, which means they cycle in and out. If you don't have a strategy around maintaining a relationship with your inactive customers, they'll likely move on and, when they're ready to buy again, will decide to work with people who share that same excitement.

One of the easiest things that you can do to increase your bottom line without adding any additional expenses, conversion events, or team members, is put focus each and every month on nurturing the relationships you have with past customers.

#2: Upsell opportunities

When customers complete your flagship program, they are either going to look to someone else to support them in that next step, or ask how you can help them. That means, you need a mechanism for moving people from your flagship into their next step of the journey.

If you don't have the next step perfectly positioned, they're going to look outside of your organization in order to keep moving forward. Like I said before, people buy cyclically. Think about it: if someone's working on their business, they're working on their business for life. If someone's working on their fitness, they're working on their fitness for life. What does that mean for you?

It means you should have offers at different steps of your customer's journey, so they can continue their relationship with you. We have worked with countless clients who join our coaching programs and experience massive success launching, closing clients from consults, hosting info sessions, etc. But once that cycle wraps, they begin to panic because they are losing all of these customers. That's why, in our coaching programs, one of our core focuses is helping clients build their ascension ladder (book a free strategy call with our team to discuss what that could look like for you).

#3: Renewals.

Renewals take effort (especially considering many people have a short-term, compartmentalized way of buying). But, you want to make sure that your customer sees the value of continuing the relationship with you over a period of years.

Although they may not be ready to take the next step now, there should be an offer waiting for them that they can move into when they're ready (it may not be high-ticket, it may be a membership or down-sell).

That's why it's important to have a renewal strategy and a genuine, 1:1 relationship with your client, where you and your team are having those conversations 90-days out (sometimes even sooner) from when their contract is up.

This should look different for each person in your in your customer base, as they will have different goals, needs, and journeys.

#4: Retention.

Customer buying psychology 101: your clients have a rush of adrenaline, and are super fired up and excited to work with you in your program. They can't wait to get to work, and once they get in, they get massively overwhelmed. As they start implementing, they realize how much more work it takes then they initially expected. Before you know it, the excitement begins to wane.

If you don't have a retention strategy for your own customers, you are going to see that by default, your retention will plummet as motivation and inspiration plummets: because once people realize how much effort they need to put forth to get results. Having a strategy to resell them on the dream, re-engage them, and create structured accountability to keep them moving is how you will retain customers.

So much of what you see online is all about gaining customers. But the most well-run businesses in the world put just as much energy and focus on the customer journey, the retention plan, the renewal plan, and the upsell plan as they do on front-end acquisition.

They know and understand that it's 7X more expensive to get a new customer than it is to resell one that you already have. So, identify every opportunity you have to encourage people to stay longer and spend more with your organization.

That means you'll need far less launches, info sessions, webinars and consults on the books to get to your goal. But most importantly, you'll make lot more money with a lot less effort.

If you're looking for more simplicity in your life and less chaos in your business, join me for a completely free workshop hosted on December 5th, where I'm going to walk you through the key to creating predictability, peace, and profits in your business!