What’s the REAL cost of each sale you lose?
Are you putting off making a business-related decision? Find out why the real cost of delaying your choice can be MUCH more than you think!
Making business decisions is hard. It’s mentally (and sometimes emotionally) taxing. It takes, time, thought and risks to make a choice – the wrong one can potentially lead to negative consequences for us.
So the easiest thing is often to put off choosing.
How many times have you found yourself looking for reasons to delay making a decision? We tell ourselves “I’ll think about it tomorrow,” or we make an excuse to wait, such as needing more information to make a choice.
Fortune favours the decisive
But fortune favours the brave. Or at least the decisive.
As Susan Jeffers explains in her book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, there’s rarely a wrong choice.
Yes, one option may get us the thing we want. But the other potential outcomes can come with positive results too. We learn valuable lessons, gain experiences and connections we otherwise may never have encountered, or we can simply end up in a different – maybe even better – place.
And there’s another, very important, benefit to making a choice right now: we don’t risk more loss.
Because for many of us, especially in business, there’s a big price to pay for putting off decisions. And that’s lost sales.
What’s just ONE customer really worth to you?
It’s easy to think you don’t have that much to lose on waiting an extra day or two to make a decision about a new marketing plan, perhaps. Or signing up to a sales class. Or even choosing a new website design.
Yes, the delay may mean missing out on a couple of sales, but it’s just a few sales, not a fortune-changing sum of money.
But actually, the price can be much higher than you think.
To explain why, let’s look at what a customer is REALLY worth to you.
Did you know that the average number of customers who buy from you again is 20-30%? So for a start, if you fail to gain one new customer by delaying a decision you haven’t just lost that one sale. As you can see, you’ve potentially lost MANY sales in repeat business.
Larger companies use statistics like this, based on their own data, to work out the lifetime value (LTV) of the average customer.
The LTV is the total value each customer is worth to them. It’s based on the average number of times customers purchase from them, and the average value of their sales.
So while, for example, the average initial sale of a customer may be just £10, their average LTV may be £100. So that means that every new customer you miss by delaying a decision doesn’t just lose you that £10 sale. It’s a loss of £100 per customer, potentially.
And that’s not all.
If a customer loves what you sell, they’re likely to mention or recommend you to family, colleagues and friends. And their referral is worth much, much more than your own marketing:
- 92% of consumers trust referrals from people they know.
- People are four times more likely to buy when referred by a friend.
- 77% of consumers are more likely to buy a new product when learning about it from friends or family. .
- 81% of US online consumers’ purchase decisions are influenced by their friends’ social media posts, vs 78% who are influenced by the posts of the brands they follow on social media.
- 43% of consumers are more likely to buy a new product when learning about it from friends on social media.
- 85% of fans of brands on Facebook recommend those brands to others.
Every day 2.4 billion brand-related conversations happen in the USA
And these conversations – people recommending what they’ve bought in chats and via social media – are happening constantly. In fact, according to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, every day in the USA there are around 2.4 billion brand-related conversations.
That’s 2.4 billion daily opportunities for a new customer to tell someone else about your amazing products or services.
So you see, when you lose a sale from delaying a decision you haven’t just lost that sale, or that customer, you’ve potentially lost MANY sales and MANY customers.
The real value of a ‘customer family tree’
To illustrate that, here’s a quick ‘customer family tree’ I drew to show one business owner how quickly lost sales can add up. This tree assumes a few things to help build a tangible picture:
- The average initial sale of every new customer is £10.
- The average lifetime value of each customer is £100.
- Every customer will recommend your business to two people who eventually buy from you.
Here’s the illustration I drew for them:
As you can see, the cost of losing just one sale from a new customer quickly adds up. Just three ‘generations’ of recommendations in from that one missed customer means the business owner has lost £1,500 in sales.
Don’t put off making decisions
So what does that mean for you? It means that if you’re sitting on a decision about your business right now, try to make it more quickly.
That doesn’t mean you should rush it. Decisions should always be properly considered, with all potential outcomes weighed up.
But what you SHOULD do is start to make the decision. Don’t put off weighing up outcomes. Or investigating your choices further. And certainly don’t put off finalising your choice.
Because remember, every day you delay making a choice you risk missing a new customer. And each new customer could be worth as much as £1,500, if not more.
How we can help you make BETTER business decisions
Of course, it’s easy to say make faster decisions when you feel informed and confident about the choices you’re making. But often that doesn’t happen early on in business.
In fact, one of the reasons why we out off deciding is simply because we don’t have any insight or data to base our decisions on. Just gut feeling at best.
We’d love to possess the knowledge and experience to make quicker and better decisions, but that’s something you can often only gain over time, or with help.
And that’s exactly what we give you in the Business Foundation School.
The Business Foundation School was created for small business owners and freelancers who don’t yet have the knowledge and experience required to make informed decisions (and act on them) in all the important areas of business.
Vital areas like marketing, sales, pricing, SEO, social media, branding and more. We also show you how to write a business plan to work to – which will give you a firm foundation on which to make decisions.
In fact, you’ll find it MUCH easier to be decisive and take action with our masterclasses and worksheets. And not only will you act more quickly, but you’ll know exactly what you need to do to attract and convert customers thanks to our expert lessons.
The lessons you get in the Business Foundation School helped Dr Kayleigh Fawcett Williams transform the sales for her online course – and made her over £10,600 this month:
These were all customers that Kayleigh could have missed out on, had she not made the decision to work with me. And now you have the chance to learn the exact insights and methods that Kayleigh used inside our Business Foundation School.
So how many days will you wait – and customers will you risk missing – by delaying your decision to join us inside?
Find out more about what you get when you join here. And if there’s anything else you need to make a decision, you’re welcome to email us and ask.
Photo by Peter John Manlapig
