Is sales stagnating? Why is this so?

Basically all new companies will encounter at least one such obstacle. Your company is growing and growing. Then it stops. I think a lot about what exactly limits the size of a company. After a lot of trials and many mistakes, I think I have found the answer: that is what you did.

When I started my own research company, I earned $150,000 in the first year. I say "we". It feels like we have many people. But in fact, in the first year, the company only had me and my wife. The office address was a separate bedroom in our house. The house was still us. When I got married in the first year, I rented it.

In the second year, our profits doubled and reached 300,000 U.S. dollars. At this time, we also hired some people. In the following year, our profit reached US$750,000; then, our profits reached a million-dollar milestone and reached US$1.5 million. In the future, it is 2.2 million U.S. dollars, followed by 3.3 million U.S. dollars. Then suddenly, we stopped and we stopped growing. Our profits have never been able to exceed $3.3 million. For three consecutive years, we have stuck at $3.3 million.

I started to feel discouraged. Since profits have been growing for many consecutive years, I have become accustomed to seeing our profit figures rise every year. When we were stuck at $3.3 million, I started working harder. Most of the time I got up at 4:30 am and worked until lunchtime.

Later I finally realized that I could no longer squeeze more personal working hours. In fact, we have reached a ceiling, and unless we make some changes to the company's operating model, we cannot penetrate this ceiling.

Realizing this, I discovered that my management style can be reduced to a funnel. All the activities that my employees received were eventually turned into my own work through this funnel. I must personally approve every proposal, attend every important meeting, appease every angry customer, screen every new employee, and sign every check.

I am a high-level control maniac, and I just don't let go. I began to feel that my career is going to be destroyed step by step, and I must bring everything in order.

I realized that my desire to control had hindered my company's growth, and decided to start the following three very difficult changes:

Stop customizing

First of all, we evacuated from the client research section because that required us to personally write for him each client's proposal. We began to provide a standardized set of research programs that apply to all customers.

2. Packing

Once we standardized the services we could provide, I wrote a manual and printed 1,000 copies. I'm going to spend some money on marketing materials that I set up. I don't want to change my mind. For example, last night, after I had finished a lot of messy work, I thought about the Bowflex system when I was on TV. I'm going to buy one. For me, the money spent on those brochures actually means that we are really making a step-by-step change.

3. Hiring a helper

Next, I hired a talented salesperson. Her wages are twice as high as those of my company's second-wage employees. This is a big expense for small companies, but there is a sales expert who can help us in the following ways:

1) She will do a lot of work on sales;

2) When the customer has a problem, the customer will look for her so that I can save a lot of time;

3) When I was away, employees would regard her as a very useful resource. They will ask her if they have problems.

For an alcoholic person, the solution is often easy to say, and difficult to do, that is: stop drinking. There is a similar problem for me as a madman. The above steps are easy to write, but I still need a few years to finally achieve the desired goal.

In fact, in the year I started to change, we actually made a few steps back and created only $3 million in profits. This is a bit of a blow to my confidence. But I still stuck, thinking that we still need time to wait for change to surprise us. In the second year after that, our profits reached $4.2 million. In the next year, our profits reached 5 million U.S. dollars, setting a new record. We finally broke the ceiling.