Overcoming an Income Plateau in Your Business

Want to know how to overcome an income plateau in your business? To look at your income figures month after month and see the same figure no matter what you try to do to move that number up is frustrating to say the least. It’s common for businesses to hit income plateaus numerous times during their lifetime so learning how to breakthrough an income plateau is key if you are aiming to keep on increasing income year after year. Keep on reading to learn about overcoming an income plateau in your business.

 

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OVERCOMING AN INCOME PLATEAU IN YOUR BUSINESS

 

 

1. Check Capacity

If you’ve reached an income plateau the first thing to check is whether you have a capacity issue. There is a big difference between hitting an income plateau because you are operating at 100% capacity versus 50% capacity, or you don’t have a limited capacity.

 

If whilst checking your capacity, you have realised you are at 85%+ capacity, then you need to focus on increasing capacity. If, at the moment, you are only offering one-to-one services, then it’s time to look into scaling your business. This is where you’ll look at creating some one-to-many offers. There can be active offers (workshops, memberships, mastermind, group prorgramme) or these can be passive offers (self-study course, templates etc). What is right for your business will depend on a number of factors, including your ultimate financial and lifestyle goals. This is exactly what I help business owners with inside of Fully Booked and Scaling.

 

FULLY BOOKED AND SCALING Moving from one-to-one to one-to-many requires more than just choosing a scalable offer. You need to choose the right scalable offer and then be able to consistently sell that offer. In Fully Booked and Scaling I’ll help you to successfully transition from online service provider to online business owner. You’ll create, successfully launch and continually sell a scalable offer that helps you not only breakthrough your current income plateau, but help you to build the business and life you dream of. For more information and to apply for Fully Booked and Scaling click here.

 

 

2. Dig into your numbers

If your income has plateaued for a number of months, the first thing you’ll want to do is dig into your numbers. You’ll want to ask yourself questions such as:

 

• What has your number of sales been per offer each month?
• What percentage of people paid upfront versus monthly or in installments?
• What percentage of sales were from new clients/customers or repeat clients/customers?
• What is the conversion rate (sales pages, sales calls)?
• What has your click-through on emails been?

Digging deeper into your numbers is going to give you more information to understand why the income plateau is happening, which is essential if you want to overcome an income plateau in your business.

 

It might be that your income has plateaued and everything has plateaued too. But it might be that sales for some offers have declined, whilst others have increased (but the income has just balanced out). It could be that sales are the same, but your conversion rate is down and therefore you shoul concentrate on getting that back to where it used to be (and then improve even further).

 

3. Ensure you have an effective sales and marketing strategy

If you have the capacity and therefore, the plateau isn’t to do with not being able to take more sales, but just you aren’t making more sales, then it’s time to look at your sales and marketing. For every offer, you should have a clear sales and marketing strategy. You should be able to map out the buyer journey and understand how you are making new people aware of that offering, nurturing those people and then ultimately turning them into a buyer. If you aren’t able to do that, then you need to stop and map out those buyer journeys.

 

On top of that, you should have an understanding of how you are selling all of your offers across a period of time. It might be that you switch focus where for a set period of time you are focusing on one offer and then you switch to another. Or it might be that you have a lead offer that you are mainly marketing, but then you have funnels that mean once someone has bought one thing then are encouraged to buy more. Or you could be selling multiple offers at the same time via different channels. For example, you could be running ads for one offer, whilst selling something else via email. As you can see there are multiple ways to sell your offers and having a clear written down strategy is key at all times, but especially when you are overcoming an income plateau in your business. You’ll need to set new sales targets that will mean you break through your income plateau and then have a marketing and sales strategy that’s designed with those sales targets in mind.

 

GET A PERSONALISED SALES AND MARKETING STRATEGY TO BREAK THROUGH YOUR CURRENT INCOME PLATEAU AND ACHIEVE YOUR FINANCIAL GOALS.  As you can tell you need a personalised marketing and sales strategy. There is a lot to consider and what is right for one business isn’t necessarily right for yours. When you book a Strategy Day I’ll create a bespoke sales and marketing strategy based on your goals for the next 12 months. So yes it will help you overcome your current income plateau, but that’s just the start. For more information and to book a Strategy Day click here.

 

4. Consider your money mindset

 

If you’ve done all of that and still are not able to overcome your income plateau then it’s worth looking at your money mindset. I’m all about strategy, but the best strategy in the world won’t work if you’ve got a mental block – and this is especially true with money.

 

Earlier, I mentioned that businesses can hit multiple income plateaus and the reality is that money mindset work is never done. As your business grows, you’ll uncover new money mindset blocks. I know this to be true, which is why I’m part of Denise Duffield-Thomas’ Money Bootcamp so I can continually work on my money mindset.

 

Working on your money mindset at any time is powerful, but if you’ve hit an income plateau, it is definitely worth grabbing a journal and taking a look at the income level you are plateaued and consider if there is anything significant or symbolic about that level.

 

Is that level equivalent of what you used to earn as an employee?

Is that how much someone else significant (partner, parent, business bestie) makes?

Is it a boundary level for taxes?

 

Then ask yourself…

 

“If I were to increase my income what negative things do I perceive happening in your business?”

 

and

 

“If I made more money what changes do I think I’d need to make in my life?”

 

Writing the answers to those questions is just a starting point, but if you are able to identify why you are stuck at the level, you can then start addressing those money mindset issues so that mentally, as well as strategically, you are ready to overcome an income plateau and increase income in your business.

 

 

That’s it. You now know about overcoming an income plateau in your business. 

 

Being stuck at an income plateau is frustrating, but as shown, there are steps you can take so that you can break through that income plateau and see your business making more income in the coming months, quarters and years.

 

I hope you’ve found this blog post useful. If you have feel free to leave a comment below or let me know on Instagram or LinkedIn. 

And if you’d like personalised help with overcoming an income plateau in your business, you can check out my service here.