Creating Exponential Growth for Your Small Business

Most businesses focus on creating incremental growth -- getting one new client or selling one product at a time -- but what if, instead, you could create exponential growth? What if, instead of selling one book, you could sell a hundred or a thousand? What if you could get a hundred clients or customers at one time, with the same amount of effort that it takes to get just one? Today I'll talk about creating exponential growth for your small business -- what it is and how to do it.

Incremental growth in a small business is when a business is growing slowly, one client or product sale at a time. Incremental growth is slow, steady and often results in businesses spending more to get a new client than the client brings in initially, hoping to make the investment back on a long-term relationship with that client.

With exponential growth, you focus on making larger sales and negotiating more substantial joint venture relationships, so that instead of growing slowly, your business profitability increases in leaps and bounds. One of the greatest marketing minds of our time, Jay Abraham, talks about exponential growth in virtually all of his books as the smartest way to grow a business.

One of the best ways to create exponential growth is by forming strategic, joint venture relationships with complementary, non-competing businesses. You see this frequently in the information marketing circuit, where gurus of all kinds promote each other, but I'm talking about something a little more down-to-earth and substantial.

Let's look at a real-life example to see how this works. Let's say you own a dry-cleaning business. You could join a networking group and talk to people about your business and hope to get referrals. You could send out fliers in the neighborhood where your business is located. You could participate in one of the many coupon-packet mailings that get sent out to various neighborhoods... and all of these efforts would result in incremental growth -- a few new customers or clients at a time.

Alternatively, you could look outside your business to see how other industries package their services. For example, health clubs sell monthly memberships: for a monthly fee, members get to use the club as often as they want. Chiropractors and massage therapists are now implementing similar models.

Likewise, in our example business, you could create a monthly or annual dry-cleaning package. That automatically increases the amount people will generally spend with you in your business. That's one way of increasing your business exponentially.

You can also implement an exponential marketing program or referral program. For example, you could build joint venture relationships with local high-end stores that sell clothing that requires dry cleaning. You sell them a set number of your membership packages at a discounted rate. Then, the stores can use your memberships as a promotion, by giving them away to everyone who comes in and spends a certain amount on their clothes. The clothing stores get new customers because of the promotion, and you get new, qualified customers because the people who bought the clothes need dry cleaning and who do you think they're going to come to? They've already basically gotten some free dry cleaning with you. Plus, in getting customers in this fashion, you've most likely reduced your cost of acquisition -- something that's often a high expense for small businesses.

Now, don't get me wrong; I'm certainly not arguing that this is the only way you should achieve business growth. You should still pursue advertising and other marketing strategies, though it's best to make sure you're getting the maximum return on these other strategies. Why run an ad that pulls a 3 to 4% response when it could pull an 8% response? Maximize the efforts you're already expending and improve what you're already doing, and you'll see a big return just from that alone. Add in making your existing clients exceptionally happy and reactivating old clients and you'll see major growth in your business in a fairly short period of time.