Businesses and self-employed individuals often have some combination of customers (one time buyers) and clients (repeat buyers) that compose their revenue. The percentage of customers to clients varies depending on the business model and the way the business is designed to work. Businesses that mostly go after or attract one time buyers have the challenge of constantly having to find new people to buy from them. This is like hunting where you can only reap the rewards once per kill. It can be stressful if the there is not an adequate marketing and sales system to consistently find enough new people and bring them in. It is also more work to market to new people and build enough trust for them to buy. Having a business designed to attract or go after repeat buyers is less work and provides more stable revenue. Here is how to set up your business to have repeat buyers.

Research suggests that 5 - 10% of prospects are ready to buy right now. Some businesses focus on those ready to buy now and ignore the other 90 - 95%. The rest are waiting for something. Maybe they are waiting for the right time or for more information so that they are certain that they are making the best choice for them or to find the right information from the vast sea of information out in the world. Either way, that 90 - 95% are not ready to buy right now. Many businesses ignore these people to focus on the 5 - 10%. To ignore them is short-sighted when you can design a process for them to either remember your business when they are ready to buy or to speed up the timeframe in which they make a buying choice.

Often, small businesses and self-employed individuals are not sure how to effectively make more money or have their desired lifestyle. In many cases, this is partially due to not understanding exactly how and why their business produces the results that it does. This lack of clarity and understanding leaves people ineffective at producing the desired results because they are not sure what to change in the way they run their business that would make the difference in achieving their goals and outcomes. Fundamentally, a business is a system made up of multiple parts that work together to produce certain results and outcomes, like a machine. Understanding what your business system or machine is designed for and how it works are the first steps to being effective at making more money and producing the desired results.

There are many habits that cause businesses to fail. This much is certain.

In this series of articles we will be exploring some of the destructive habits we have noticed in our practice of coaching businesses, that people have adopted to undermine their ability to produce exceptional results.