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 why only one approach compounds. Understand how small improvements across 12 metrics multiply into significant results.
Uncover specific pain points, validate assumptions, and reveal what actually drives buying decisions. Run research that produces actionable insights, not just interesting quotes.
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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
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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.
Cultivate belief that skills and results improve through deliberate effort, treating setbacks as learning opportunities rather than fixed limitations.
Navigate competing priorities and secure buy-in by systematically understanding, influencing, and aligning internal decision-makers toward shared goals.
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.
Assign full conversion credit to the final touchpoint before purchase to identify which channels close deals but miss earlier influences that started journeys.
Design experiments that answer specific questions with minimum time and resources to maximise learning velocity without over-investing in unproven ideas.
Identify and leverage limitations as forcing functions that drive creative problem-solving and strategic focus.
Assign credit to marketing touchpoints that influence conversions to understand which channels work together and deserve budget in multi-touch journeys.
Measure which marketing activities drive desired outcomes to allocate budget toward channels that actually generate revenue instead of vanity metrics.
Scale through partner relationships where other companies distribute your product to their customers in exchange for commissions or reciprocal value.
Automate multi-touch email campaigns that adapt based on recipient behaviour to nurture leads consistently without manual follow-up from reps or marketers.
Track your user journey through Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue to identify which stage constrains growth most.
Analyse profit per customer to determine if your business model works at scale before investing heavily in growth and customer acquisition.
Enable tools to exchange data programmatically so you can build custom integrations and automate processes that vendor-built integrations don't support.
Organise customer and prospect information to track relationships, communication history, and next steps without losing context or duplicating effort.
Store information in browsers to track user behaviour across visits and enable personalised experiences without requiring login for every interaction.
Document your ideal customer's role, goals, and challenges to tailor messaging and prioritise features that solve real problems they actually pay for.
Organise the tools that capture leads, nurture prospects, and measure performance to automate repetitive work and connect customer data across systems.
Drive acquisition and expansion through product experience where users discover value before sales conversations and upgrade based on usage.
Prioritise tasks systematically by sorting them into urgent-important quadrants, focusing effort on high-impact activities.