If you spend any time at all in the online world, you’ll know that people are always going on about their sales and how massive their last launch was.
There’s endless talk about how much money they make in a month. The focus is always on turnover and sales; ‘£10k months’ and ‘6-figure launches’; the cash that comes into the top of their business.
Let’s be honest, it all gets pretty boring anyway after the 10000000th time you’ve heard it!
But have you noticed how few people actually talk about profit?
Profit is the metric that really matters in your business. It doesn’t matter how many sales are coming in the top end – if you’re spending money as fast as it’s coming in, there’s no profit left at the bottom.
If there’s no profit, you don’t get paid.
There’s no money to reinvest back into the business. In some cases, people overspend to the point where they haven’t even got money to pay their tax bill. And that’s not great.
So what CAN you do to boost your profit and make sure you’ve got enough money each month to spend on the things that are really important, like you getting paid? Here’s 3 quick and easy things you can do!
1) Revisit Your Regular Spending
The first thing to do is to grab your paper bank statements or open your banking app. Go through the last few months and make a list of ALL the direct debits and other regular payments that your business pays out for each month.
I know this probably sounds really obvious and a bit dull!
But how many times have you subscribed to something and then stopped really using it, or changed the tech you use and never got around to canceling or downgrading the subscription package?
Things like email hosting; podcasting or landing page or graphic design software; memberships; auto-renewals for URLs you bought but really are never going to use. Basically things you bought or subscribed to that seemed like a good idea at the time but for whatever reason, you don’t use or need any more.
When it’s just £4.99 or £9.99 a month, you probably don’t notice the money coming out, but all these things properly start to add up over a few months.
It’s literally profit straight back in your pocket if you’re not using them. So definitely worth spending half an hour to go back through!
2) Check For Annual Savings
The next is then to go through your list of things that you pay out monthly for and DO use, that you need and want to keep.
For loads of these things, you’re given the choice to pay monthly or for the year when you sign up, and you probably chose monthly because you didn’t know whether you’d like it and wanted the option to cancel.
Only to find that four years later, you’re still paying monthly for Adobe or Canva or Mailerlite or whatever, which you use all the time and is now well embedded into your business!
I completely get that paying monthly may still seem like the easiest option. But the thing is that you’re effectively paying a (usually significant) premium for this, compared to paying annually. You’re paying extra for the freedom and flexibility to cancel, which isn’t now something you’re likely to do.
Again, that extra premium you’re paying is literally profit that’s not in your pocket. So is it worth it to you?
If you log into your account and look at the payment settings, most companies allow you to save 10-15% (or even more) if you pay upfront for the year, rather than monthly.
I did this a while back and saved a good chunk of cash – over £600 a year – by only paying for the stuff we actually use, and then switching to paying annually for them.
That’s £600+ I now get to spend on gin or shoes or put towards a week away somewhere hot, or whatever else you like.
So again, definitely worth looking at!
3. Do a Product and Funnel Audit
This final thing is more fun – where you can really then start to find the easy one-time-and-done wins, to boost your profit without a huge amount more work.
Because the real key to increasing your profit is to either get people spending more money with you; or get them buying more often (or both)!
Grab a piece of paper or a flipchart and sketch out all the products and services you offer within your business (you can get fancy software to do this, but I find writing it down on a big piece of paper is the easiest way to see it all).
Then draw in the sales sequence and funnel attached to each one.
By funnel, I mean this: when new people come into your world, what’s the first thing they do and how do they move along, to actually buy something?
Let’s say someone new starts following you on social media.
Then what? What’s the journey from being a new follower, to becoming a paying customer or client?
Let’s say they then make their first purchase.
Then what? What’s the journey from buying their first product or service, to then going on and buying something else?
Maybe you’d like to add a new automated email sequence in, to make sure people are offered the right ways to work with you at the right point in their journey.
Maybe it’s sending them a special time-limited offer to buy something else, when the first product or service they purchased is coming to an end.
And every time you offer somebody a way to work with you, add in an upsell or a bump offer!
It’s a bit like the old McDonald’s “would you like fries with that?” thing – offering something additional at the point of sale. Some people will say yes, some people won’t. But for the five minutes it takes to add it to your sales page on your cart, it can be a great way of increasing conversions.
Look at the products and services you’ve drawn out on paper. For each one, what’s the natural partner that goes with it? What’s the thing that will help someone get there more quickly, more efficiently, or actually get that additional support and hand holding that they really need? And offer it to them!
Like if you’re selling an upcoming workshop or course – could you also offer a helpful mini-training or resource, that can help them start making progress immediately?
Or a deep-dive 1:1 session either before or after the course or workshop, for more personal support?
If you’re selling a product – what else might they need and want, to go alongside it?
When I ran my Profit Master Workshop recently, it was priced at £31.20. On the sales page, there was a box you could tick to also buy the spreadsheet that I was going to work through in the session, for an extra £9.
All but two people bought the upgrade.
They looked at the sales page and thought “yup, that’s a great buy, I’m going to have it!”. I’d already created the spreadsheet and it literally took just a few minutes to add to the sales page.
That’s extra profit I would have missed out on if I hadn’t offered it, and money I’ll keep making as people can keep getting the Profit Master Workshop through my website (available here by the way, if you’re interested!).
So have a look through the products and services you’ve got and just make sure that you’re maximising your profit, by offering people the things they need.
Because once someone’s made that decision to buy from you, selling them an additional product or service really is a quick profit booster!
If you really want to get to grips with your profit, do check out my Profit Master Workshop. We cover things like:
- How to work out what the profit in your business REALLY is, and what that means for your sustainability
- How to use my Total Profit System to work out which services to dump and which to double down on
- How to not be scared to look at your numbers (you’re not alone if you do feel that way!)
- How to track your profitability
- Plugging profit leaks – 3 things to watch for…
And loads more to help you take more money home. It’s still just £31.20, here’s the link again to get immediate access (or just to see that example of a bump offer on the sales page, if it helps!).
Until next time,
Claire