Lindsey Calof shares three essential question to ask before launching a new revenue stream.
As fitness continues to evolve, entrepreneurs and companies are always thinking about fresh opportunities to boost their growth and profitability. A new stream of revenue sounds exciting initially, but it can turn into a bigger weight on your business than you planned for. Taking the extra time to answer a few key questions along with taking on some prep through action will not only help answer your question of “should we take the plunge,” but also make the process a lot easier on your team.
In this article, I’ll review three questions along with actions you can take as you plan for launching a new revenue stream.
Question 1: Does this additional revenue idea present a viable opportunity for your business to grow?
Action: Test for viability of this product within your space.
- Set a formal process to ask your members who are already paying for your service. Listen for common problems coming up in your current experience and think about how your idea can effectively solve it.
- Pull in some industry trend reports that will provide more data to back up your hunches. If you’re reading Club Solutions content or publications like Fitt Insider weekly reports on emerging industry trends, you’re in a great place to start researching.
- Take a step further and create a few prototypes and test with clients who are able and willing to help you give feedback.
Question 2: What exactly do you want customers to experience? (What is the customer journey?)
Once you’ve tested for viability, it’s important to do some work with your team to uncover the step-by-step journey members will take with your new product or service. This will give you the information how operationally you need to organize your team to accomplish the creation of the project and also give you a grasp on the amount of time that will be involved.
Action: Uncover the customer journey.
- Decide on a customer persona (the client or member that will use your product the most).
- Create a simple Journey Map to start making your service more operational and make it come to life.
- Once you have your steps in place and have all of your brainstorming completed, decide what you want your first version of the project to look like. This is referred to as a Most Viable Product (MVP). You now have a simplified version to get your service off the ground knowing you can add and improve once it is launched.
Question 3: Now knowing your MVP, how can you ensure launching is worthwhile to your business?
While it’s dependent on what you want to offer, the great thing about an MVP is it can be your lowest low-cost option, both from a monetary and manpower standpoint.
On the flip side, you may decide time asked of you and your employees is a more valuable asset to you. Take it into consideration what skillsets you have on the team and what you need them to learn in order to make this successful.
Action: Create an inventory of the skillsets from you or your team in addition to doing the work.
- For each step in your Journey Map, label each one of the following:
- Work can be assigned as a step someone on your team already knows how to complete.
- Learn can be an extra if it’s a skill set someone needs to learn how to do.
- There is opportunity to hire a contractor specializing in the work you want to. The cost may be higher up front but save you time and will ensure quality .
- Give your best estimate on the amount of time and/or financial investment each will require.
Once you have confidently answered these questions along with the pre-work involved, you should feel so much more organized and empowered to move forward. Start taking action. Hit “GO” on your project, get it out to your clients and members on time, and begin to make your business so much more impactful.
