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.
Plan your week with intention. Manage tasks with a system you trust. Stay out of inbox traps. Protect deep work time. Run better meetings. Close your week with a firebreak.
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.
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.
Build a reporting dashboard that tracks the 12 growth metrics across all four engines. Choose the right tool, structure views correctly, and make data actionable weekly.
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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Small improvements across 12 metrics multiply into exponential growth. Learn how engines connect, why improvements compound, and where leverage lives.
Focus your entire organisation on the single metric that best predicts success at your current growth stage, avoiding distraction and misalignment.
Credit the channel that introduced prospects to your brand to measure awareness efforts and understand which top-of-funnel activities start customer journeys.
Calculate how much pipeline you need relative to quota to ensure you generate enough opportunities to hit revenue targets despite normal conversion rates.
Build distribution through your personal brand and network where your expertise and story attract customers who trust you before your company.
Maintain an unchanged version in experiments to isolate the impact of your changes and prove causation rather than correlation with external factors.
Group customers by acquisition period to compare behaviour patterns and identify which acquisition channels and time periods produce the best long-term value.
Build self-reinforcing systems across demand generation, funnel conversion, sales pipeline, and customer value that create continuous momentum.
Assemble tools that manage pipeline, automate outreach, and track performance to help reps sell more efficiently and managers forecast accurately.
Define pipeline progression steps to standardise how reps advance opportunities and give managers visibility into where deals stall or convert unexpectedly.
Design experiments that answer specific questions with minimum time and resources to maximise learning velocity without over-investing in unproven ideas.
Document your repeatable processes in clear, step-by-step instructions that ensure consistency, enable delegation, and capture institutional knowledge.
Diagnose and break through stagnation by identifying which business mechanisms have reached capacity and require new approaches.
Turn satisfied customers into active promoters who systematically bring qualified prospects into your pipeline at near-zero acquisition cost.
Track your user journey through Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue to identify which stage constrains growth most.
Assign credit to marketing touchpoints that influence conversions to understand which channels work together and deserve budget in multi-touch journeys.
Focus resources on high-impact business mechanisms where small improvements generate disproportionate results across the entire customer journey.
Set ambitious goals and measurable outcomes that cascade through your organisation, creating alignment and accountability for strategic priorities.
Analyse profit per customer to determine if your business model works at scale before investing heavily in growth and customer acquisition.
Attract prospects through valuable content that solves real problems, building trust and generating qualified leads who approach you.
Deploy fast, low-cost experiments to discover scalable acquisition and retention tactics, learning through iteration rather than big bets.