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Give me three moves
any small business

Should I focus on getting more customers or making more from the ones I already have?

Short answer

Almost always the customers you already have, because there is no acquisition cost and no delay. A 10% price rise across an existing book lands next month at effectively zero cost; winning 10% more customers requires marketing spend, sales time and typically two to three months before the first invoice. For a business under about twenty people, the existing book is nearly always the larger and faster opportunity.

The instinct to grow through acquisition is strong because it feels like progress, and because the alternative involves a conversation with people you like. But acquisition has a cost, a lead time and a failure rate, and none of the three apply to repricing or to selling something additional to a customer who already trusts you.

There are usually three separate levers in the existing book and most owners only consider the first. Price — what you charge. Frequency — how often they buy, which is where the largest hidden losses sit in appointment-based trades. And attach — what else they could buy from you, which is the one that creates recurring revenue.

The arithmetic favours the existing book heavily at small scale. Ten per cent more per customer, across a hundred customers, with no marketing spend and no delivery cost, is a different quality of money from ten new customers who each cost you time and money to win.

Acquisition becomes the right answer once the existing book is properly priced. Doing it first means acquiring customers onto prices that do not work, which multiplies the problem rather than solving it.

Want this worked out for your business specifically?

Everything above is the general case. Describe your business in one sentence — what you sell, roughly how many customers, roughly what you charge — and you will get three specific moves back, each priced per month with the arithmetic written out so you can substitute your own figures.

Free, no signup, about thirty seconds.

Give me three moves

People also ask this as

  • Is it cheaper to keep customers or find new ones?
  • How do I grow revenue without more marketing spend?
  • What is the fastest way to increase revenue in a small business?

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Figures are typical ranges for small businesses in the UK, US and Canada, given so you can check them against your own books rather than take them on trust. They are arithmetic on stated assumptions, not a forecast, and not financial advice.