Grow your numbers – Increase leads generated

Anna Stubbs • June 3, 2025

No one can deny that to grow your business, you must attract new potential customers (or leads). It’s how you generate these leads that’s important though.


STEP is a lead generation acronym to help you generate quality leads without pointlessly blowing your marketing budget:


S = Strategy T = Target E = Efficiency P = Process

Strategy = your bigger picture plan.

What are your long-term goals for your business? Do you need lots of new customers or will you focus more on selling additional services to your existing customers? Are there better ways you can grow your business without chasing new customers, i.e. should you focus on developing your strategic partnerships? Document your strategy and goals in an annual plan that you update quarterly and refer to monthly.


Target = your target market or your ideal customer.

Your customer selection criteria should not be customers who have a heartbeat and a wallet. Who will benefit most from your offering? Who do you want to work with and what specific services do you want to offer them? Finally, where do these future customers hang out in the greatest numbers?


Efficiency = how much does it cost you to generate a new lead?

For example, if you spend $500 on a radio campaign and get two enquiries, then the cost of each lead is $250. Or, if you spend $5,000 on advertising and marketing per annum and generate 100 new leads per year then each lead has cost you $50 (plus the time taken to generate these leads). There are bound to be much cheaper ways to generate new leads.


Process = the system and software you use to track the effectiveness of your marketing activity.

Carefully develop a process and ensure it’s followed consistently by your team. Having an up to date CRM (or database) is essential. You should also review your website analytics and produce reports to help track your marketing spend efficiency for continuous improvement.

Here are 10 cost-effective ways ideas to generate new leads:


  1. Ask your existing customers for referrals.
  2. Develop a referral reward system.
  3. Nurture your customers by sending newsletters and blogs (that they can forward on to others).
  4. Publish eBooks and resources on your website for prospects to download (after providing their contact details).
  5. Be active on social media (with a focus on education not selling).
  6. Create an online forum.
  7. Identify strategic partners so that you can refer each other work.
  8. Speak at networking events and webinars (this is educational marketing).
  9. Ask customers to complete Google and social media reviews.
  10. Book a complimentary meeting with us to discuss more ideas specific to your business.



"You attract what you are, not what you want. If you want great, then be great." – Tony Gaskins

Grow your numbers - Reporting and accountability

By Anna Stubbs • June 3, 2025
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are essential to measure the performance of your business in order to grow your numbers. Of course, the measures themselves are pointless unless there’s reflection and discussion to ensure they’re met. Here’s a simple and effective way to link KPIs to a reporting and accountability framework. Firstly, make sure there is ONE leader for each of the departments in your business: Director, Leadership, Product / Service Development, Operations, Marketing, Sales, Finance, HR, and Admin / IT. One person can lead more than one department, but two people can’t lead one department. You can also contract out departments to avoid needing a large head count of team memebrs (finance, marketing and IT can be outsourced relatively easily). Be clear on who reports to who . One person can only manage 5 or so people effectively. Consider establishing teams with team leaders to enable you to achieve a ratio under 6 to 1. Set up regular department meetings . This may be the CEO with each of the other department heads, the Operations Leader with the Operations team (if less than 5 in the Operations team) or with the Operations Team Leaders (if more than 5 in the Operations team).

Grow your numbers – Control overhead expenses

By Anna Stubbs • June 3, 2025
One of the simplest ways to grow your bottom line is to tighten your belt and spend less.

Grow your numbers - Increase your transaction frequency

By Anna Stubbs • June 3, 2025
Have you ever done the maths on your average spend per customer? That is, how much your customers spend (on average) each time they buy from you. Simply take your total sales for any period (e.g. 12 months) and divide this by the total number of transactions or invoices for that period. When you know your average transaction value, you’ll start to see the value of getting your customers to buy from you more frequently. If only 50% of your customers buy from you one more time per year, your sales will increase significantly. Consider the example of a house maintenance business that does window cleaning, house washing, and gutter care. Imagine the business has 500 customers and turnover of $130,000. There are 460 invoices for the year so the average spend per transaction is $283. Some customers are vigilant about getting their house and windows washed and others leave it until the mould and leaves in the gutters are causing leaks. If you are able to get one more transaction per customer per year, then sales will more than double (500 customers x $283 = additional turnover of $141,500). More importantly, you will be able to prevent an unmanageable flood of job requests after each rain storm!