28/09/2026
Before You Buy Anything Else, Do You Actually Know What's Stopping Your Business From Growing?
Most businesses don't have a shortage of things they could do.
They have far too many.
Improve the website.
Do more SEO.
Post more on LinkedIn.
Get more Google reviews.
Start advertising.
Install a CRM.
Try email marketing.
Automate the follow-up.
Get an AI assistant.
Make more videos.
Improve Google Business Profile.
Run a reactivation campaign.
And, of course, somebody will inevitably tell you that you absolutely must be on whatever social media platform happens to be fashionable this week.
They're probably all capable of producing a result.
But which one should you do first?
That's the question that matters.
Because for most SMEs, money isn't unlimited.
Neither is time.
Neither are people.
So the objective shouldn't be to do everything.
It should be to identify what is currently preventing the business from achieving the growth it wants and fix that first.
Start with the destination
Here's a surprisingly difficult question.
How many more customers do you actually want?
Not:
"We'd like to grow."
Not:
"We need more leads."
Not:
"We want to increase turnover."
Give it a number.
If you currently win 20 customers a month, perhaps you want 25.
If you run an accountancy practice, perhaps you want two additional £5,000-a-year clients each month.
If you're a roofer, perhaps another three quality projects every month would transform profitability.
If you're already operating close to capacity, perhaps you don't actually want more customers at all.
Perhaps you want to generate the same revenue with better margins and less pressure on the team.
That's an equally legitimate growth objective.
Until you define the outcome, however, it's almost impossible to decide what needs fixing.
Then work backwards
Let's say you want five additional customers every month.
Now we can start asking useful questions.
How many enquiries do you currently receive?
Where do they come from?
How many become customers?
How quickly are enquiries answered?
How many quotations are issued?
How many quotations are followed up?
How many potential customers visit the website without making contact?
How visible are you when somebody searches for what you provide?
How strong is your reputation compared with the competitors around you?
How many old prospects are sitting in your database?
How many existing customers could buy something else from you?
Suddenly we're not discussing "marketing".
We're investigating the business.
And somewhere in those answers is likely to be the thing that's restricting growth.
You may have a visibility problem
Perhaps potential customers simply aren't finding you.
Search for the services you provide in the areas you serve.
Who appears?
You?
Or your competitors?
Look at Google.
Look at Maps.
Look at reviews.
Look at the websites appearing around you.
And increasingly, look at what happens when somebody asks an AI service for recommendations.
The way people discover businesses is changing.
Being visible where your customers are looking remains fundamental.
If you're not being considered, you can't be chosen.
In that situation, increasing visibility deserves attention.
But visibility isn't automatically the answer.
You may have a trust problem
Perhaps people are finding you.
They're just not choosing you.
That's different.
Look at your business through the eyes of somebody who has never heard of you.
Does the website inspire confidence?
Are your reviews recent?
Are there enough of them?
Can prospects see evidence that you've successfully solved problems like theirs?
Is it obvious who they're dealing with?
Does the business look active?
Professional?
Credible?
Safe?
We sometimes talk about reputation as though it's separate from marketing.
It isn't.
Trust is part of conversion.
A potential customer might find you perfectly well and still choose somebody else because that business feels like the safer decision.
If that's happening, buying more traffic may simply expose your credibility problem to a larger audience.
You may have a conversion problem
Perhaps plenty of people find you.
Your reputation is good.
Traffic is healthy.
But very few visitors become enquiries.
Now we need to examine what happens when somebody arrives.
Is it obvious what you want them to do?
Can they easily contact you from a mobile phone?
Can they ask a simple question?
Can they book an appointment?
Is there an enormous form standing between them and the conversation?
What happens outside office hours?
Does the website actively help the prospect take the next step?
Or does it simply sit there looking attractive?
A website shouldn't merely be a digital brochure.
It should contribute to the commercial process.
You may have a response problem
Perhaps the enquiries are coming in.
But nobody responds quickly enough.
We dealt with this in the previous article because I think it's one of the most overlooked problems in SMEs.
The business spends money creating demand.
A prospect raises their hand.
And then everybody is too busy to respond.
If that's your constraint, you don't necessarily need more leads.
You need to become better at handling the ones you've already got.
Technology and AI can play an important role here.
Not because they're exciting.
Because they're capable of being available when your people aren't.
You may have a follow-up problem
This one can be painful.
Look at the quotations you've issued over the last six months.
How many didn't proceed?
Now separate them into two groups.
People who said no.
And:
People who never actually made a decision.
I suspect many businesses would be surprised by the second number.
Prospects get busy.
Priorities change.
Emails get buried.
Projects get postponed.
People forget.
Your salesperson forgets too.
That's life.
But a well-designed system doesn't need to forget.
If you're already generating enough opportunities but too many disappear after the initial conversation, follow-up could be the cheapest growth strategy available to you.
Or perhaps you have a capacity problem
This is where Article 2 comes back into the picture.
What would happen if your marketing suddenly worked 30% better?
Could you cope?
If the answer is:
"Absolutely not."
Then generating more business probably shouldn't be your immediate priority.
Perhaps you need to increase capacity first.
That doesn't automatically mean employing more people.
Look at the repetitive work.
Look at administration.
Look at duplicated processes.
Look at routine customer communication.
Look at how much time is spent moving information between systems.
Look at work that could be automated.
Look at software subscriptions that overlap.
Technology should help your existing people produce more value.
If you can increase capacity without increasing headcount at the same rate, you've created a much stronger platform for growth.
This is why buying solutions too early is dangerous
Suppose I sell SEO.
Guess what I'm likely to discover?
You need SEO.
If I sell websites?
Your website needs replacing.
Advertising?
You need advertising.
AI automation?
Apparently everything needs automating.
That's not necessarily because anybody is dishonest.
We naturally see problems through the lens of the solutions we understand.
But the SME owner needs to look at things differently.
Don't begin with the solution.
Begin with the constraint.
You wouldn't call a builder and say:
"I've decided my house needs £20,000 of underpinning. When can you start?"
You'd establish why the crack appeared first.
Business growth deserves the same discipline.
Diagnose before you prescribe.
Then there's the software cupboard
I'd also add another question to the exercise.
What are you already paying for?
SMEs have accumulated an extraordinary number of subscriptions.
CRM.
Email marketing.
Scheduling.
Social media.
Call tracking.
Website chat.
Review software.
Analytics.
Automation.
Project management.
Reporting.
AI tools.
Some are indispensable.
Some overlap.
Some haven't been logged into since 2024.
Before adding another monthly subscription, understand what you've already got.
Could systems be consolidated?
Could one platform perform several functions?
Could information flow automatically between them?
Could the business have fewer suppliers and one clearer point of accountability?
Growth isn't just about increasing revenue.
Removing unnecessary cost and complexity improves the bottom line too.
Your Growth Plan doesn't need to be 47 pages long
Strategy has acquired an unfortunate reputation for producing enormous documents.
I prefer something more practical.
A useful SME Growth Plan should answer five questions.
1. Where are we now?
Customers.
Revenue.
Enquiries.
Conversion.
Capacity.
Marketing spend.
Systems.
Reputation.
2. Where do we want to get to?
Not vague ambition.
A measurable commercial outcome.
3. What's stopping us?
Visibility?
Trust?
Conversion?
Response?
Follow-up?
Capacity?
Something else?
4. What should we fix first?
Find the biggest constraint.
Prioritise it.
5. How will we know it worked?
Customers.
Revenue.
Profit.
Hours saved.
Conversion improved.
Costs reduced.
Capacity increased.
Something measurable.
That's the plan.
Everything else is implementation.
And implementation matters
There is one final point that is particularly important for SMEs.
Don't create a strategy that requires the owner to find another 15 hours a week to implement it.
It won't happen.
Everyone is already busy.
That's why improvements need to be practical.
Small enough to implement.
Fast enough to produce value.
Measurable enough to justify continuing.
And wherever possible, done without disrupting the business that is already paying the bills.
You don't need a six-month digital transformation project.
You need progress.
Fix something.
Measure it.
Move to the next constraint.
Repeat.
So here's the challenge
Before you spend another pound on marketing, software, AI or consultancy, sit down with a blank sheet of paper.
At the top write:
HOW MANY MORE CUSTOMERS DO WE WANT?
Put a number beside it.
Then underneath write:
WHAT IS STOPPING US GETTING THEM?
Don't accept the first answer.
"We need more leads."
Why?
"We're not visible enough."
How do you know?
"People aren't converting."
Where?
"We're losing enquiries."
Why?
Keep digging.
Because eventually you'll reach something you can actually fix.
And that's where your next investment should go.
Growth doesn't come from doing everything
That's the message I want to leave you with at the end of this series.
SMEs are under pressure.
Costs are rising.
People are expensive.
Margins matter.
Technology is changing rapidly.
AI is creating extraordinary possibilities.
And business owners are being bombarded with things they're supposedly falling behind on.
You don't need to chase all of them.
You need clarity.
Know the outcome you want.
Understand where you are today.
Find the biggest obstacle standing between the two.
Fix it.
Measure the result.
Then find the next one.
That's how you turn marketing, technology and AI from expenses into investments.
And it's how you grow without simply adding more people, more software, more marketing and more complexity.
So before you ask:
"What should we buy next?"
Ask the much more valuable question:
What's stopping us from growing?
Find that answer first.
Then do something about it.
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