Focus resources on high-impact business mechanisms where small improvements generate disproportionate results across the entire customer journey.
.webp)
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.
Select tools across your growth stack using clear evaluation criteria. Avoid common pitfalls, ensure integrations work, and build a system that scales with your business.
Uncover specific pain points, validate assumptions, and reveal what actually drives buying decisions. Run research that produces actionable insights, not just interesting quotes.
%2520(1).webp)
Run quarterly business reviews that assess current state, set ambitious but realistic goals, build actionable roadmaps, and define key results that keep everyone aligned.
Analyse monthly performance data across all four growth engines. Identify what is working, what is not, and make tactical adjustments using a structured decision framework.
Mike Michalowicz
Rating
Rating
Rating
Rating
Rating
A decision tool for prioritising growth work. Diagnose where to act, then pick a small change that unlocks progress now.
Deep channel expertise doubles revenue but still hits a ceiling. Mastering one engine isn't enough. See why system thinking beats specialisation.
Small improvements across 12 metrics multiply into exponential growth. Learn how engines connect, why improvements compound, and where leverage lives.
Interpret experiment results to understand the probability that observed differences occurred by chance rather than because your changes actually work.
Identify what you do better or differently that competitors can't easily copy to defend margins and win customers consistently over time.
Calculate your true growth trajectory by measuring the rate at which your business grows when gains build on previous gains over multiple periods.
Apply disciplined experimentation across the entire customer lifecycle, optimising every stage through rapid testing and data-driven iteration.
Cultivate belief that skills and results improve through deliberate effort, treating setbacks as learning opportunities rather than fixed limitations.
Build distribution through your personal brand and network where your expertise and story attract customers who trust you before your company.
Block extended time for cognitively demanding tasks requiring sustained focus, maximising valuable output whilst minimising shallow distractions.
Clear mental clutter by transferring all thoughts, tasks, and ideas onto paper or screen, creating space for focused work.
Determine whether experiment results reflect real differences or random chance to avoid making expensive decisions based on noise instead of signal.
Capture specific user actions in your product or website to understand behaviour patterns and measure whether changes improve outcomes or create friction.
Assign full conversion credit to the final touchpoint before purchase to identify which channels close deals but miss earlier influences that started journeys.
Credit the channel that introduced prospects to your brand to measure awareness efforts and understand which top-of-funnel activities start customer journeys.
Focus resources on high-impact business mechanisms where small improvements generate disproportionate results across the entire customer journey.
Assemble tools that manage pipeline, automate outreach, and track performance to help reps sell more efficiently and managers forecast accurately.
Define how you're different from alternatives in a way that matters to customers to guide all messaging and ensure consistent market perception.
Measure the percentage of customers who stop paying to identify retention problems and calculate the true cost of growth in subscription businesses.
Track campaign performance precisely by appending parameters to URLs that identify traffic sources, mediums, and campaigns in your analytics.
Focus effort on the 20% of activities that drive 80% of results, systematically eliminating low-yield work to maximise output per hour invested.
Connect tools so data flows automatically between systems to eliminate manual entry, keep records current, and enable sophisticated workflows across platforms.
Store raw data from all business systems in one place to run analyses and build reports that combine information across marketing, sales, and product.