Start at the End: How Companies Can Grow Bigger and Faster by Reversing Their Business Plan

Chapter 8

Securing and Locking Up Your Customers

In the last chapter, I introduced you to the concept of the marketing system, and to the fact that you can dominate your market by methodically improving each of the four aspects of the system. We covered in detail the first part of the system—lead generation.

Now that you know how to generate more leads, you need to improve the final three parts of your system: (1) increasing conversion rates, (2) increasing transaction prices, and (3) increasing the lifetime value of your customers.

Each of these three marketing system components will significantly boost your company’s sales and profits. But the last one, increasing the lifetime value of your customers, has the added benefit of making your business nearly bulletproof. For instance, I recently worked with an entrepreneur who took his business to $10 million in sales only to have it collapse when the economy experienced a downturn. If he had focused on improving lifetime customer value, he would have built a loyal customer base in that business. When the economic downturn occurred, he would have lost some sales. But the majority of his loyal customer base would have continued buying from him. His business would have survived and been poised for significant growth when the economy rebounded.

This chapter shows you how to improve the final three aspects of your marketing system and presents two additional marketing tactics that will make your competitors wish they had chosen a different ...