Find the two levers holding your business back

Why ten levers instead of one big marketing plan

Because growth is a chain, and a chain breaks at its weakest link. Spending more on ads does nothing if half the calls go to voicemail. A beautiful website does little if the offer is confusing. Fixing the weak link usually pays more than polishing a strong one.

Here is a quick example you can check. Say you get 60 inquiries a month, answer 70% of them, close 30% of those you answer, and the average sale is $1,200. That is about 12.6 sales, or roughly $15,100 a month. Raise the answer rate to 90% and, with nothing else changed, you get about 16.2 sales, or roughly $19,400. Same ad budget, same website, about $4,300 more a month. That is the response lever at work, and it is one of ten.

The ten levers at a glance

Every lever is a place where revenue leaks or grows. The full guide to the ten levers explains each one with warning signs and a quick test.

1. Offer: what you sell, how it is packaged and how it is priced.
2. Customer focus: who you are for, and who you politely turn away.
3. Findability: whether the right people can find you when they look.
4. First impression: what your website, profile or storefront says in the first few seconds.
5. Response: how fast and how reliably you answer calls, texts and emails.
6. Closing: how many quotes or conversations turn into paying customers.
7. Reputation: reviews, proof and the trust that comes before the first call.
8. Repeat and referral: how much business your existing customers bring back.
9. Capacity: whether you can deliver more work without breaking people or quality.
10. Numbers: whether you know your margins, cash and cost per customer.

How the self-assessment works

You score each lever by ticking five plain statements, so the whole business gets a score out of 50. There are no fields to type into and nothing to submit. Print the self-assessment, sit down with a coffee and your last three months of numbers, and be honest. A tick only counts if it is true today, not if it is planned.

The total matters less than the shape. A business that scores 4 or 5 on eight levers and 1 on two is in a very different spot from one that scores 3 across the board. Our guide on reading your score shows how to rank the weak levers by impact, so you know where to start.

Where Ali comes in

Some owners take the scores and run with them; others want someone to check their thinking. Both are fine. When you want help, there are four ways in, all described on the services page:

• a paid review session to go through your scorecard together
• a full ten-lever diagnostic where Ali scores the business against your real evidence
• a focused two-lever plan you can actually carry out
• monthly check-ins that re-score the levers and keep the plan moving

Ali has more than 17 years of experience in growth and digital marketing, starting in 2007, and holds an MBA in Technology Management. He has built more than 150 live HVAC websites, and the measured outcomes from that work are on our results page.

Proof, stated plainly

The numbers we cite are results from our HVAC work, each one tied to a named, live business. For example, CombiBoiler.ca reached 300% ROI and more than 300 monthly leads, and HVACDeal.ca produced more than 500 leads at a 12:1 ROI. Those are heating businesses, not yours. What transfers is the method: find the weak lever, measure it, fix it, measure again.

Start here

Run the self-assessment first; it is free and it will make any conversation with us far more useful. Then call, text or email with your scores. You can see what each kind of help costs on the pricing page, read common questions on the FAQ, and find what to put in your first message on the contact page. Your first half-hour conversation costs nothing, and nothing you sign afterwards locks you in.