Focus resources on high-impact business mechanisms where small improvements generate disproportionate results across the entire customer journey.
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In simple terms, a growth lever is any action or strategy that can dramatically boost a company’s growth when applied. Think of a lever in the physical sense – a small move can lift a heavy object; likewise, the right business lever can produce outsized growth from relatively little effort . A growth lever could be something like improving a sales funnel or streamlining customer onboarding – a focused change that leads to significantly more revenue or users. In everyday language, it’s the high-impact move you can make to quickly accelerate your company’s success.
Growth levers matter because they guide resource allocation in environments where everything seems important but not everything drives results. Most organisations spread effort across dozens of initiatives attending conferences, updating websites, launching email campaigns, tweaking product features without strategic prioritisation. Lever thinking forces clarity: which single improvement would most accelerate growth? This focus prevents the common failure mode of doing many things adequately rather than a few things excellently. For B2B contexts especially, where resources are perpetually constrained, identifying and exploiting the right lever can generate 2-3x returns compared to unfocused activity. The financial impact is substantial: improving a true lever (say, reducing customer churn from 15% to 10%) affects every subsequent year's revenue, compounding gains, whilst improving a non-lever (say, adding a minor product feature) generates minimal lasting impact. Lever thinking also accelerates experimentation: rather than testing random tactics, you design experiments specifically targeting your identified levers, ensuring even failed tests generate insights about core growth mechanisms. Research shows high-growth companies consistently demonstrate lever discipline they identify their primary growth constraint, invest heavily to address it, then move to the next constraint, whilst slower-growing competitors pursue scattered initiatives. Organisations that systematically identify, prioritise, and pull growth levers report 30-50% efficiency improvements in growth spending.
Applying the concept of growth levers in your marketing or growth workflow involves a few key steps: identify potential levers, prioritise the most promising ones, and take action to execute changes. It’s both an analytical and creative process, combining data insights with strategic thinking. Here’s how to put growth levers to work:
Start by mapping the buyer journey and reviewing data for bottlenecks or missed opportunities. Combine quantitative clues conversion drops, churn spikes with qualitative feedback from customers and front-line staff. List three to five candidate levers that, if improved, could unlock significant growth.
Score each candidate for impact, confidence, and effort. Choose one or two with the greatest expected return for the resources available. This focus prevents dilution and ensures the team’s energy targets the most promising levers first.
Build a clear plan: what will change, who owns it, and which metric will prove success. Run small experiments around the chosen lever, measure results, and iterate quickly. Document learnings so the knowledge compounds even if an experiment fails.
When a lever delivers, bake the change into routine processes and dashboards. Move to the next priority lever and restart the loop. Over time, successive lever pulls create a step-change in the firm’s growth trajectory.
Get a grip on what's actually working and what needs course correction. Use data and experiments to make decisions instead of opinions. See how changes in one part of the system affect everything else. Random tactics don't compound, coordinated ones do.
Meet Random Rick, Specialist Steve and Solid Sarah. See three approaches to growth and why only one compounds. Understand the model that shows how improvements multiply. Apply systematic thinking to double revenue.
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Without clear strategy, every tactic feels like a guess. Define who you're for, what problem you solve, and how each touchpoint moves them closer to buying. Turn scattered efforts into a coherent system where marketing, sales, and product pull in the same direction.
Strategy without tracking becomes wishful thinking. Build a rhythm that spots problems early, doubles down on what works, and keeps the team aligned on priorities. Turn data into decisions and decisions into momentum.
Random experiments waste time and budget. A structured framework ensures every test teaches you something, even when it fails. Decide what to test, design experiments properly, analyse results accurately, and share learnings so the whole team gets smarter.
Mike Michalowicz
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A decision tool for prioritising growth work. Diagnose where to act, then pick a small change that unlocks progress now.
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Build self-reinforcing systems across demand generation, funnel conversion, sales pipeline, and customer value that create continuous momentum.
Measure the percentage of customers who stop paying to identify retention problems and calculate the true cost of growth in subscription businesses.
Choose one metric that best predicts long-term success to align your entire team on what matters and avoid conflicting priorities that dilute focus.
Win customers through direct sales conversations where reps guide prospects from discovery to close with personalised solutions and relationship building.
Calculate your true growth trajectory by measuring the rate at which your business grows when gains build on previous gains over multiple periods.
Attract prospects through valuable content that solves real problems, building trust and generating qualified leads who approach you.
Scale through partner relationships where other companies distribute your product to their customers in exchange for commissions or reciprocal value.
Analyse profit per customer to determine if your business model works at scale before investing heavily in growth and customer acquisition.
Estimate the maximum revenue opportunity if you captured 100% market share to size your opportunity and prioritise which markets to enter first.
Deploy fast, low-cost experiments to discover scalable acquisition and retention tactics, learning through iteration rather than big bets.
Articulate the specific outcome customers get from your solution to communicate why they should choose you over doing nothing or using alternatives.
Structure experiments around clear predictions to focus efforts on learning rather than random changes and make results easier to interpret afterward.
Maintain an unchanged version in experiments to isolate the impact of your changes and prove causation rather than correlation with external factors.
Track predictable yearly revenue from subscriptions to measure business scale and growth trajectory in B2B SaaS and recurring revenue models.
Select metrics that reveal whether you're achieving strategic goals to track progress and identify problems before they become expensive to fix.
Document your ideal customer's role, goals, and challenges to tailor messaging and prioritise features that solve real problems they actually pay for.
Plan how you'll reach customers and generate revenue by choosing channels, pricing, and sales models that match your product and market reality.
Compare two versions of a page, email, or feature to determine which performs better using statistical methods that isolate the impact of specific changes.
Define how you're different from alternatives in a way that matters to customers to guide all messaging and ensure consistent market perception.
Calculate the total cost of winning a new customer to evaluate marketing efficiency and ensure sustainable unit economics across all channels.