How to Double Your Revenue in 90 Days – In Just 7 Minutes with Simon Severino

Check out episode
  • Discover how to double your revenue without sacrificing your personal life
  • Find out what’s the right sales system and strategy for you
  • Learn more on the importance of working on the form, fit, and function of your sales system

Resources/Links:

Summary

Are you stuck in the revenue plateau and just don’t know how to go out of it? Do you want to still be able to get the income you deserve without sacrificing too much of your personal time? Do you want to make the most out of your sales system and redefine it in a way that can guarantee you better revenue?

Simon Severino is the CEO of Strategy Sprints GmbH. He teaches growth, strategy, and innovation at select MBA courses across Europe. He is also the host of the Strategy Show. His value proposition is to double your revenue in 90 days and he backs that with a money-back guarantee!

In this episode, Simon shares his insights on why it is important to cut down your project and focus your time and attention on the core competencies and what you’re currently working on. He also shares his experiences of starting small and working his way up, and the do’s and don’ts on finding the right sales system and strategies for you and your business.

Check out these episode highlights:

  • 01:27 – Simon’s ideal client: “We work with SAS and service businesses who have less than 10 people. So, they have something between two and five staff and five contractors, vendors, freelancers that they work with.”
  • 02:25 – Problem Simon helps solve: “Their life is miserable. So, I was- in my first year- yeah, I was there. My first year of my own business, I started strategy sprints. We crushed it in the first year. We had some good traction from the market, good resonance because I was doing this for 17 years already, so we knew what we do.”
  • 03:31 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Simon: “This is the moment where the vicious cycle starts in sales because right now you are so much in the business that you don’t have time to work on the business. You deliver your good work for your clients, and you’re solving their problems”
  • 05:38 – Common mistakes that people make before they find Simon’s solution: “Yes, too complicated business. Too many things going on. Right now, they are jumping on the next shiny thing that is the clubhouse, and starting rooms on the clubhouse. This is the main common mistake is ‘shiny object syndrome’.”
  • 05:57 – Simon’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): “The solution is to reduce the amount of projects that you have right now. You will only need four traction channels and you probably have already seven of them. So, you just need four of them, and this is where my invaluable free action comes in.”
  • 06:44 – Simon’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Check out Simon’s FREE Tool: Strategysprints.com/equalizer
  • 07:36 – Q: What can you do in the pandemic right now? A: I would say in the pandemic resist the urge to start too many things. Really focus on your core competencies. What’s currently working.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“Simplify your business. Four endpoints. One main product for one client at one price and then you think about one upsell. This is your main business.” -Simon Severino Click To Tweet

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:09
Greetings everyone a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. I’m Tom Poland in Little Castaways Beach, Australia, joined today by Simon Severino. Simon, good day. Sir, a very warm welcome from down under. Whereabouts are you hanging out?

Simon Severino 0:23
Hey, it’s so cool to be here. Hello, everybody.

Tom Poland 0:26
Whereabouts are you living, Simon?

Simon Severino 0:28
I’m in Vienna, Austria right now.

Tom Poland 0:30
Vienna, Austria to Castaways Beach, Australia. Fantastic. For those of you who don’t know, Simon, he’s the CEO of Strategy Sprints. He teaches growth strategy and innovation at select MBA courses across Europe. He’s also the host of the Strategy Show which I’ve had the privilege of being on. What I want to tell you about Simon is his very interesting value proposition. Talk about the pointy end of business! What Simon offers for SAS developers and service providers is to double your revenue within 90 days, and he backs that with a money-back guarantee. So, as we’d say, in Australia here, he’s pretty fair dinkum. So that, Simon, actually introduces us quite nicely to the subject of the interview, which is, How to Double Your Revenue in 90 days, and you’re going to tell everyone how to do that in just seven minutes. Our time starts now. Why don’t we kick off with question number one, who is your ideal client?

Simon Severino 1:27
We work with SAS and service businesses who have less than 10 people. So, they have something between two and five staff and five contractors, vendors, freelancers that they work with. Small team. They’re doing their thing since a couple of years. They are at around 35k per month. And they have hit a plateau because 35k per month means, “Okay, the world wants your product, but now you have to deliver.” And now you are the bottleneck to the delivery because you cannot say yes to three more clients, and this is where your problems start.

Tom Poland 2:08
So that- you talked about the problem, so that is question number two, and we’ve got six minutes left. How would you define the problem that you solve for those SAS developers, their service providers who are around about a 35k mark, but hit the ceiling? Anything else you want to add to the nature of the problem they’re facing?

Simon Severino 2:25
Their life is miserable. So, I was- in my first year- yeah, I was there. My first year of my own business, I started strategy sprints. We crushed it in the first year. We had some good traction from the market, good resonance because I was doing this for 17 years already, so we knew what we do. We were doing it well. We hit half a million in the first year in revenue, and everybody was like, “Hey. Cool! Simon, you’re crushing it.” And I was like, “I don’t have a life.”

Tom Poland 2:57
Right.

Simon Severino 2:58
Seen my wife since two weeks? I’m on planes all the time. Every city looks the same. I hate this!

Tom Poland 3:05
Yeah.

Simon Severino 3:09
I didn’t want more of that.

Tom Poland 3:11
No. So you’ve lost your life, essentially, in the business, and so personal relationships began to suffer. You didn’t have any time on your own. Well, question number three, we’ve got five minutes left, what are some of the other symptoms that people are going to be experiencing, which would give them a kind of a heads up that they might need to learn about how you work with clients?

Simon Severino 3:31
This is the moment where the vicious cycle starts in sales because right now you are so much in the business that you don’t have time to work on the business. You deliver your good work for your clients, and you’re solving their problems. Wonderful! But your problems are just starting to pile up because something will come up. Let’s say a pandemic or some shifts in the market so stuff comes up.

Tom Poland 3:58
Yeah.

Simon Severino 3:59
Never! It’s highly improbable, and it happens because-

Tom Poland 4:03
So, something changes.

Simon Severino 4:05
Exactly. There will be changes outside.

Tom Poland 4:07
Right.

Simon Severino 4:08
And now, if you didn’t take the time to work on the business, meaning rechecking the positioning, rechecking the mindset, rechecking the message, rechecking if they are really getting what they need, and if you are organized in an adaptable, agile way so that you can cope with changes and react quickly when this change comes, it’s too late. And this is what most people are experiencing right now. They were just doing good client work in the business up to 35k per month. They had no time, not one or two hours per day working on the business, on form, fit and function of the sale system, form, fit and function of the marketing system, form, fit and function of the operations! And so, what they did is, “Oh no, I don’t need this now. It’s going well. Let’s just focus on the clients.” And now they have a problem. So, what we’re doing right now, helping them doing their- getting out of the weeds and working on the business quickly to improve sales right now.

Tom Poland 4:25
So, they can scale value, delivery scale, sales. So, question four, and we’ve got just under three minutes left, these are smart people. They’re working hard. What are some of the common mistakes that you see these people making before they find your solution? Working more hours is probably one of them, but is there anything else they’re doing that’s really going to end up being a waste of time or take them in the wrong direction?

Simon Severino 5:38
Yes, too complicated business. Too many things going on. Right now, they are jumping on the next shiny thing that is the clubhouse, and starting rooms on the clubhouse. This is the main common mistake is “shiny object syndrome”.

Tom Poland 5:56
Syndrome. Right.

Simon Severino 5:57
The solution is to reduce the amount of projects that you have right now. You will only need four traction channels and you probably have already seven of them. So, you just need four of them, and this is where my invaluable free action comes in. So, what you can do right now, to handle the pandemic, is reduce the amount of things that you do. Simplify your business. Four endpoints. One main product for one client at one price and then you think about one upsell. This is your main business. And how you can do it? I have even a resource for you-

Tom Poland 6:34

Wow. Great! Killing a couple of questions with the same answer. So, question six is the valuable free resource. Where can people go to find out more about how to do that?

Simon Severino 6:44
Strategysprints.com/equalizer and you can download the tool that we use every month to get our positioning right. If you put half an hour in using that tool and I have a small video there that shows you how we use it.

Tom Poland 7:01
Yup!

Simon Severino 7:01
If you put half an hour into that tool, you are working on form, fit, and function of your sales system because now you find what makes you unique. You swim free from competition and you just double down on what’s working for you because that’s your uniqueness, your superpower.

Tom Poland 7:18
Right.

Simon Severino 7:19
And this is where you will double down on and everything else you just cut.

Tom Poland 7:23
Perfect! And we’ve got putting out cutting, we’ve got 35 seconds left before I need to cut. What’s the one question I should have asked you but didn’t?

Simon Severino 7:32
Oh, there are so many! Seven minutes is so short.

Tom Poland 7:35
It is.

Simon Severino 7:36
But I guess, yeah, what to do in the pandemic right now? I would say in the pandemic, resist the urge to start too many things. Really focus on your core competencies. What’s currently working.

Tom Poland 7:49
Simpler, more focus. Folks, go to strategysprints.com/equalizer. You’re going to get the free template there. 30-minute video laying out the strategic thinking behind how Simon operates. Simon, thank you so much for your time.

Simon Severino 8:04
Thank you, Tom. Bye-bye, everybody.

Tom Poland 08:07
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.

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