Preparing to successfully scale your 1:1 service business

If you want to successfully scale your 1:1 service business this year there are things you can do now to prepare and make scaling your business easier. Many 1:1 service providers get to a point where they are fed up of their income being tied to the number of hours they work and decide that instead of growing their business they’ll start to scale instead. Whilst scaling your business on paper is easy, many 1:1 service providers fail to successfully make the transition from growing mode to scaling mode. Taking the time to prepare in advance will help maximise your chances of successfully making the transition (and as smoothly as possible). Keep on reading to find out how to prepare to successfully scale your 1:1 service business.

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PREPARING TO SUCCESSFULLY SCALE YOUR 1:1 SERVICE BUSINESS

Choose the right scalable offer for your business

To successfully scale your 1:1 service business you’ll need a scalable offer in your business. A scalable offer is something that people can buy where the input and output aren’t directly correlated. When you sell 1:1 services your input and output are directly correlated. You work an hour and you get paid for an hour. You get paid for a specific service and then deliver that specific service. Whereas with a scalable offer there is a potential for a bigger output (more income) from the same input (number of hours).

Fortunately, as a business owner, there isn’t just one way to scale your business. There are multiple scalable offers you could introduce and by working out in advance what you’d like to offer you can make other adjustments in your business so that launching the new scalable offer is smooth and successful.

Some common scalable offers used by 1:1 service-based businesses are:

A self-study digital course
Digital products (workbooks, templates, e-books etc)
A mastermind
A group programme
Online live trainings (masterclasses, challenges, workshops)
In-person events (Workshops, retreats, conferences etc)

As you can tell there are many ways to scale your 1:1 service business and what is best for your business will depend on your long-term business goals, the time you have to work on your business, your ideal clients, your financial goals, your other services, your personality etc.

Not sure what scalable offer is best for your business? I go into more details abouit choosing the right scalable offer in this blog post – How to choose the right scalable offer for your business.

Focus on audience growth

When you offer 1:1 services, especially if they are high-ticket 1:1 services, you can get away with have a small audience on social media or a small mailing list. However, the majority of scalable offers will be priced below your 1:1 services, and so to make the same amount of revenue you’ll have to make more sales. And that means you’ll need a bigger audience or you’ll need to improve your conversion rate.

Depending on the research you look at and the industry your business is in then quoted email conversion rates vary from 1 – 5%. Let’s go with the worst case scenario of 1% that means that for every 100 subscribers on your email list 1 will buy.

So if you are planning on launching a course and would like 10 people to sign up then ideally you’d have 1,000 people on your mailing list when you launch. If right now you have an email list that is in the say 500 subscribers you’ve got work to do.

And by focusing on audience growth sooner rather than later you’ll have more time to nurture your email subscribers, which will help you to beat the industry averages and get that conversion rate higher.

FULLY BOOKED AND SCALING

Fully Booked and Scaling is a one-to-one mentoring programme for online service providers who want to be fully booked in their one-to-one services and then successfully add a scalable offer to their business.

Over 6 months I’ll help you to become fully booked with one-to-one clients, choose and introduce the right scalable offer for your business, and then have a comprehensive sales and marketing strategy so you can continue to successfully sell on both sides of your business.

For more information, and to apply, click here.

Have the right resources and infrastructure in place

When you are running a 1:1 service business you can get away with a fairly old-school or low-tech way of working. But scaling your business will mean having to take payments from, and deliver products and/or services to, more people so you want to make that as smooth as possible.

There are so many different tech solutions out there to help make scaling your business easier and by investing, and getting used to the software ahead of time, it will make your life easier.

For example, in my business I use Kartra. Kartra is an all-in-one platform that makes scaling an online service-based business super easy. In one place you are able to run your email marketing, build your sales pages, take payments, deliver digital products and run memberships and courses. And the benefit of it all being in one place is that you get great analytics as everything is connected and since it is only one piece of software it makes outsourcing super easy. You can find out more about Kartra and start a 14-day trial with Kartra for just $1 by clicking here.

Further reading: I go into greater detail about how Kartra allows you to scale your business with ease here.

And since I’ve mentioned outsourcing the other thing to consider when preparing to successfully scale your 1:1 service business is whether you need to hire more people. Depending on the scalable offer you decide to introduce it may be that you need additional people in your business. For example, if you decide to run a membership you might hire a community manager.

Hiring the right person can take some time and there is nothing worse than hiring in a hurry or panic. So whilst preparing to scale your 1:1 service business think about whether you’ll need extra people, what skills they’ll need and what point you’ll need them to join.

Improve your ability to sell through marketing alone

It isn’t unusual for 1:1 services to be sold via a conversation – this could be a sales call, a back and forth over email or even a DM conversation. Again that is absolutely fine when you are selling 1:1 services, especially high-ticket ones. Each sale is worth so much that dedicating that time to sell in that way is fine. However, if your plan is to have a scalable offer that is at a lower price point then you need to master the ability to sell through marketing alone otherwise you will become a bottle neck in your business.

As the CEO of your business you have to wear a lot of hats in your business and I’m guessing part of the reason you wanted to scale was to be able to make more money or work less. That means you want to be focusing your time on activities you have to do, such as client delivery, delivering the workshop, being on live calls etc. Not on sales calls, responding to emails and having DM conversations.

So you have two options hire someone else to do your sales or improve your ability to sell through marketing alone.

Selling through marketing alone is vital if you want to make passive income in your business, but is very important regardless. You want to be able to create sales pages, emails, long-form content, social media posts and/or adverts that mean people will buy instantly. Mastering that skill will mean your sales are no longer dependent on the number of conversations you are able to have.

That’s it! You now know how to prepare to successfully scale your 1:1 service business.

Scaling your business is exciting. Depending on how you decide to scale you’ll drastically increase the revenue potential of your business, and you might even be able to work less as well. But not every 1:1 service business manages to scale successfully and for some the transition takes a lot longer than necessary.

There is another way and by preparing ahead of time you’ll be able to scale successfully and sustainably. Hopefully this blog post has got your started, but if you’d like more support my programme Fully Booked and Scaling would be perfect for you.