Alex Smale

The 10 Biggest Ways Your Online Business Is Losing Profits

by Alex Smale | Aug 6, 2024 | Alex Smale's Blog

In this post, you will learn:

Why your business is always so damn difficult to run
Where all the money you thought you should have is disappearing to
How to start generating more profits in your business without having to build yet another new funnel or offer
What you can do to start getting back control of your profits and your lifestyle

Now just a heads up before we dive in, this might sting a bit.

My client Jordan said to me recently “Can’t knock that devil on my shoulder thinking about all my lost revenue this year” after I showed him all of the places he’d lost money in only the last 12 months. Let alone before.

So make sure you pay attention to each of these 10 ways and take action on each of them.

This is going to be helpful for you if you’re an online coach, consultant, course creator, digital agency owner, affiliate marketer or online service provider.

And if you can implement this stuff, you’ll have more clarity, keep more profits, feel like your business is more simple to run, more enjoyable day to day, and you’ll be able to build your business to suit your lifestyle.

Who is Alex Smale and why should you listen to him?

My name is Alex Smale and I am a veteran, multi-award winning digital marketer and online business expert.

I have been in the online space for well over 20 years, having run multiple 7-figure businesses including a digital marketing agency in the leisure industry, an affiliate marketing business, and an online coaching business.

I am also a world-class award winning software developer, having developed a virtual reality system for people living with dementia that won the international award in VR for healthcare, called Immersicare.

I have had more than my fair share of successes and failures. And I know consult with some of the biggest names in the online industry to help them to become more profitable and successful, through better data awareness and better marketing.

Let’s dive in to the 10 biggest profit losers in your business:

So let’s dive in and show you how to become more aware of, in my experience, the ten biggest holes in your business profits.

How you can identify them. And more importantly, what you can do to start to fix them.

Starting with…

Profit Loser Number 10 – Your Pencil Needs Sharpening

In other words, your marketing knowledge is probably out of date.

And by ‘out of date’ – I mean, anything older than a month.

Digital marketing moves fast. VERY FAST. – Because of the constant changes in the ad platforms, societal behavioural changes, politics, fads – it’s a constantly moving landscape.

What was working 6 months ago, doesn’t work as well anymore.

What’s working today, probably won’t last longer than a few months before it starts to drop off.

Good marketers know it’s not about a particular funnel or message.

Good marketing is like an endless experiment in a laboratory.

The best marketers are always testing and experimenting with new ideas to create the best possible ‘marketing potion’ that converts well at that particular time.

At The Sharp End Of The Business Stick… Every Course Or Program Is Out Of Date

Because courses or funnels are just frameworks. It’s what works for your business with your audience that matters.

And that’s something that’s changing, every single day.

Things changed a lot after the big Facebook outage in April of this year.

So if you really want to get the most out of your marketing. – Not only do you need to be testing and experimenting all the time.

You need to be connected to others who are doing the same at your level. – Sharing things that are working with each other.

So just like with any scientific white paper – you are collaborating to get the best possible result.

Profit Loser Number 9 – Your ‘Money Window’ Is Massive

In other words, you’re looking at your numbers on a monthly basis, instead of in real time.

You probably think you have your finger on the pulse by checking all your numbers every month. Right?

But actually a lot can happen in a month in this game.

And if you’re only looking at your business through that tiny snapshot, it can be hard to see the trends.

Worse still, it can really reduce the time you have to react if things are going wrong. And even longer, to see if things are going better after you’ve fixed them.

You need to be able to see your numbers in real time.

Connected to a dashboard like the Data Nexus (image above) where all your up-to-date, realtime numbers can be seen in a glance.

Which will give you the business intelligence you need to make intelligent and accurate decisions.

To drastically reduce the mistakes you make.

Without second guessing or worrying about those decisions and actions.

Profit Loser Number 8 – Tempting But Terrible

Your thirst for constantly wanting to build new things…

When things don’t work as well as we want them to. – The natural temptation is to build something else instead.

This funnel isn’t converting – ok, I’ll build another funnel – and another, and another.

It’s like a merry-go-round you can’t get off of.

And what’s worse is. – Everytime you build something new – it’s like a tidal wave in your business.

Causing chaos and unseen complexity that everyone on the team has to adjust to and try and get right.

When in reality – you’ve already built everything you need – you don’t need to build something new

You just need to improve what you already have and get it working

But nobody will tell you that, because it’s not sexy – everyone else in this industry is trying to sell you a new system – when what you really need is NOTHING new!

Profit Loser Number 7 – You’re Blind In The Middle

You’re only looking at the book-ends of your numbers. – The front end, or the bottom line.

And when you do that – you end up with massive holes in your business that you can’t see.

But it’s in the MIDDLE where all the action is – this is where the leads are at a critical stage in becoming a client.

And if you aren’t on top of those metrics – or perhaps you aren’t even aware of what those metrics are – then you’re definitely going to be losing a huge amount of profits.

Profit Loser Number 6 – The First Five Minutes

In my experience, both in working with thousands of clients – or with doing many different courses and programs – it’s incredibly rare that a business gets this right.

So I imagine this is probably true for you too – your onboarding process is probably broken.

Now what most businesses in the online space massively underappreciate – because they’ve forgotten what it felt like – is just how scary it is to hand over thousands of dollars to a stranger on the internet.

The minute they hang up the phone after just making the payment – they start to worry.

Did I make the right decision? – Have I been scammed? – Am I working with a good company? – And the longer it takes for the onboarding process to start, the more these thoughts fester.

And while everyone else is bending over backwards to keep their clients happy and to help them achieve results.

They don’t realise that the key to unlocking abundant client success is won or lost in the first five minutes after the sale.

And by having the right onboarding process to make sure your product is 10 out of 10 from the get-go.

Profit Loser Number 5 – You’re Trying To Race A Tractor

The engine of your business doesn’t match your ambition for success.

You see, everyone thinks that good marketing is the answer to fixing a broken business.

But the problem with that, is that marketing is like gasoline. – It’s expensive, it burns quickly, and it’s completely useless without an efficient engine to pour it into.

If you haven’t got the engine of your business built the right way. – You might as well be pouring gas on the floor and setting it on fire.

You’re not going to move forward.

Just like a complicated road network – you need to have the right systems in place in your business for everything to flow smoothly.

You need the right Standard Operating Procedures to make sure time isn’t being wasted, and profits aren’t being lost.

So that everyone on the team, both old and new, know exactly what they need to do in every situation.

Then your business will run like a well-oiled machine.

Profit Loser Number 4 – You’re Herding Cats

Carrying on from the last point, you need to make sure the roles and responsibilities in your business are clearly defined.

And that includes your own. In fact, especially your own.

Without clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Everyone on the team will just be wandering around, doing their own thing, without a care in the world.

This is somewhere we see businesses often losing the most amount of profits.

Because it’s a double-edge sword – expensive team resources are being wasted – and also opportunities are being missed.

Which leaves business owners going to bed feeling out of control and overwhelmed.

They don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing themselves.

Let alone what the team are supposed to be taking care of.

But when everyone’s roles and responsibilities are clearly defined the team becomes focussed on aligned goals for the business.

Profit Loser Number 3 – You’re Working Like It’s 1989

Your automations just aren’t sophisticated enough.

In this day and age of A.I. and automation – you really shouldn’t be doing the manual tasks anymore.

Because every manual and repetitive task that you or your team are doing – is costing you profits.

And the irony is – a lot of business owners don’t learn how to do this because they don’t have the time.

So make sure you’re getting your head around having the machines do the heavy lifting for you.

Profit Loser Number 2 – The Dumpster Fire

You’ve already got a pile of money but you’re setting it on fire!

The biggest enemy of profit is cost – and the amount of profits you make are directly proportional to the costs you incur.

Yet so many business owners don’t have a tight enough grip on their expenses.

For example – as a quick challenge for you – do you know exactly how much money you spend each month on software? – could you even ballpark it? – and that’s just one category of expenses.

James, one of our clients, was burning through an insane amount of expenses each month – built up over a long period of working online.

It was a combination of software, contractors, excess team members, service charges etc. etc. etc.

We helped him to reduce his outgoings by 75% which saved $60,000 from being burned each and every month!

Do you know how much you could save?

Have you got a system in place for both reducing and then managing your expenses to keep them efficient?

Profit Loser Number 1 – No Thanks To Money

Your janky sales process is leaving it all on the table.

Now this is where, by far, business owners lose the most profits – and I think a lot of that can actually be put down to ego.

Because most business owners think they have sales really nailed.

Now you might think your sales process is good because you don’t do slimy sales tactics – or hard closes.

That your sales team help the prospects first, rather than trying to hard sell them.

And maybe you think that your close rates are ok – Because they’re about 25% and in line with what people say is average in the industry.

But what if I told you that what you thought was good, was only a quarter of what you could have.

That you were losing tens of thousands of dollars every month because you weren’t able to see the small differences each week.

That add up to a massive difference each month? – That you could quadruple your revenue for the same cost by being more aware of – The unseen factors in your sales numbers.

Such as the lead quality, lead warmth, lead journey, timing, financing, returns per call and many more?

Now THIS Is The Mind-Blowing Part

Now – what’s REALLY mindblowing about everything I’ve taught you so far – is that all of these 10 factors compound.

So let’s say you get up to speed with marketing and you double the number of leads you get for the same budget – and then with realtime figures you optimize twice as fast – so you have twice the leads in half the time.

And then you improve your middle funnel numbers to increase your conversions by 30% there – and you halve your expenses – and you double your speed with automations – and your team are twice as efficient as before

Each thing multiplies the last, which multiplies by the one after and so on – meaning you cannot just increase your profits by a little bit – but you can increase your profits by many multiples!

For example – do you want to know why Jordan was so gutted about all the money he’d lost at the beginning of this post?

It’s because with a couple of straightforward changes – he was able to double his application to booked call rate – and then half his no-show rate Just those two things alone – compounded – quadrupled the number of sales calls his team had – leading to his best month ever in his first month of working with us.

What Next Alex?

If you’ve enjoyed this post and learnt something about where your business might be losing profits, and you’d like to know what you can do to stop it from happening.

Head over to our site at Operation Profits and perhaps book in a call with us to have a relaxed chat about where you’re at right now, and where you’d like to get to.

I look forward to speaking to you soon.