60 Ways to Help Small Businesses Grow (Ranked by How Much It Already Hurts)
I was chatting with a buddy who owns a small HVAC shop last week. He was telling me how he’d just spent $3,000 on a radio campaign and had no clue if a single call came from it.
Then he mentioned, almost as an afterthought, that his office manager had a stack of 40 unsigned estimates on her desk. Nobody had followed up on ANY of them.
Holy cow. The money he was chasing with radio ads was already sitting in a pile on a desk.
How about you? If you run a small business, which pile is sitting on YOUR desk?
I just finished working through two of Dan Kennedy’s books: No B.S. Grassroots Marketing and his Guide to Successful Marketing Automation. Between them there are well over 150 concrete things a local business could be doing. I boiled them down to 60 and did something Kennedy doesn’t do: I sorted them by how painfully aware the owner already is of the problem.
Why does that matter? Because it’s a LOT easier to help someone with a problem they’re already losing sleep over than to convince them they have a problem they’ve never noticed.
Now on with the show…
How to read this: Tier 1 is stuff owners complain about without being asked. Tier 2 is stuff they nod at when you name it. Tier 3 is stuff you have to show them in numbers before they believe it. Almost every item in Tiers 2 and 3 is just another trigger hanging off the same customer database (item 13), so once the foundation is in place the rest gets cheap.
Tier 1: They’ll bring it up before you do
These are the daily bleeders. If you fix even two of these, you’ve earned your keep.
| # | The pain they already feel | What we can build or set up |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Missed and unanswered phone calls | AI phone triage, after-hours answering, automatic text-back on every missed call, calls logged straight into the customer list. |
| 2 | Leads go cold before anyone follows up | Instant email + text + “call this person” task the moment a form or call comes in, then a 5 to 7 step new-lead sequence. |
| 3 | Quotes and estimates that never close | An “appointment, no sale” sequence running 6 to 12 months. Kennedy reports 15 to 30 percent of these people come back and buy. |
| 4 | No-shows and cancellations | Confirmation sequence before, reschedule sequence after, self-service rebooking link, and a “keep every appointment” reward program. |
| 5 | Not enough Google reviews | Automatic review request after every job. Gmail customers get the Google link. Unhappy customers get routed to a phone call instead of a public post. |
| 6 | Chasing invoices | Stripe invoicing, quote to e-signature to invoice in one flow, automated payment reminders. |
| 7 | Phone tag just to book a time | Online self-booking on the website, in every email, in every text. |
| 8 | “I don’t know which ads work” | Unique phone number or promo code per ad source, and a daily scoreboard email showing leads by source. |
| 9 | Ad costs rising, results falling | Cut the media budget in half, move a slice into tracked grassroots tactics, and kill every dollar that can’t prove itself. |
| 10 | Not showing up in local search | Local SEO, a fully built-out Google Business Profile, consistent name/address/phone everywhere. |
| 11 | Website captures nothing | A “how to choose a…” guide as bait, chat widget, booking button, and a weekly automated test that the forms still actually work. |
| 12 | Old lead list sitting idle | The nine-word email (“Are you still looking for X?”) to every dead lead. Replies become hot leads. |
| 13 | No customer database at all | Build it from the point of sale, invoices, caller ID, fishbowl drawings, even checks. Everything else on this list depends on it. |
| 14 | Referrals happen by accident | Buddy-pass cards handed out in the 2 to 4 week honeymoon window, a referral web form, a referral ask sent only to people who rated you 9 or 10, and an employee referral contest. |
| 15 | Low average ticket | Scripted suggest-sell plus a staff contest, upsell stack at checkout, mystery shopper who hands over cash when the script is followed. |
| 16 | Owner doing copy-paste marketing at night | Ask “what do you do by hand that works?” and automate exactly those tasks. Nothing fancier. |
| 17 | Can’t produce content or a newsletter | AI-drafted monthly newsletter, scheduled blog posts pushed to social automatically, a 52-week email nurture written once. |
| 18 | Staff forget callbacks | The system nags until someone clicks “call made,” with on-screen scripts so every call sounds the same. |
| 19 | Groupon-style deals lose money | Price the deal above the average ticket, cap the quantity, and attach a bounce-back offer so they come back a second time. |
| 20 | New competitor moving in | Pre-emptive blow-out event, an alliance with nearby merchants who swap certificates, stronger offers aimed at the streets near the newcomer. |
| 21 | Event and webinar no-shows | Registration with confirmation and reminder sequence, plus personal one-to-one reminders. Kennedy’s people saw attendance jump from 30 to 55 percent. |
| 22 | Free publicity never happens | A calendar of newsworthy moments, a local media contact list, templated press releases ready to go. |
Tier 2: They nod when you name it
They know these are problems. They just haven’t done anything about them because there’s always a louder fire.
| # | The pain | What we can build or set up |
|---|---|---|
| 23 | One-time buyers don’t come back | Welcome sequence, thank-you note with a deadline-dated bounce-back, follow-ups that differ by what they bought, a simple web app for repeat orders. |
| 24 | Customers only hear from you when you want money | Monthly card, newsletter, or e-zine. Kennedy’s own plan hits 262 touches a year. |
| 25 | Website visitors leave without buying | Facebook pixel and retargeting ads, plus a trigger that fires a call or text when a KNOWN contact hits the booking page and bails. |
| 26 | Mass blasts get ignored | Segmented offers pulled from the data: veterans, VIPs, people who bought service A but not B. |
| 27 | Sales calls start cold | A short quiz or a choice of guides on the website that tags what they care about and routes the follow-up. |
| 28 | Unhappy customers leave silently | One-question survey twice a year. A low score creates a task for someone to call and fix it. |
| 29 | Info kits never get mailed | A “shock and awe” package that ships itself from a print-on-demand service the moment a lead comes in. |
| 30 | Newcomers pick the competitor | New-mover welcome mailing sequence and a monthly new-neighbor event. |
| 31 | No partners sending business | Certificate swaps with nearby merchants, VIP cards in a big employer’s payroll envelopes, displays in each other’s lobbies, a bundle of partner offers used as a closing tool. |
| 32 | Ads run when nobody’s buying | Weather, season, and event triggered ad scheduling. Only extend the shoulders of the busy season. |
| 33 | Marketing pieces look amateur and take forever | Template library or online print portal with the offers prefilled. |
| 34 | Directory listings are a money pit | Rationalize, track, and redirect the spend. |
| 35 | Trucks and job sites are unused billboards | Vehicle branding, and a yard-sign clause built right into the quote (“$200 off if the sign stays 30 days”). |
| 36 | Sponsorships show no return | Require decals and mentions, and go recover the vendor co-op money that’s sitting unused. |
| 37 | Email open rates dropping | Subject-line testing, engagement scoring, and a list-cleaning bot to protect deliverability. |
| 38 | Prospects go dark | A three-checkbox reply (“ready now / contact me on this date / not interested”) and follow-ups that mix phone, text, email, and postcards. |
| 39 | Need higher-ticket sales | In-office mini-seminars, customer-hosted parties, appreciation events with contact capture at the door. |
| 40 | Staff won’t record data | A dead-simple tally sheet enforced by a mystery shopper who either hands over $50 or a “you just lost $50” memo. |
| 41 | Support requests fall through the cracks | Service inbox with auto-acknowledge and escalation when nobody answers. |
| 42 | Weak offers, constant discounting | Offer engineering with AI against the competitors’ offers, and short 25-day launch sprints with a real deadline. |
Tier 3: You have to show them the numbers
Don’t get me wrong, some of the BIGGEST wins live down here. But the owner doesn’t feel these yet, so lead with something from Tier 1 and bring these along once the data exists.
| # | The hidden pain | What we can build or set up |
|---|---|---|
| 43 | Silent attrition of the best customers | Score every customer on recency, frequency, and spend. Auto-fire a win-back at 12 months quiet. Send real gifts to the top 20 percent (the whales). |
| 44 | Don’t know what a customer is worth | Lifetime value calculator, and a worksheet that turns “I want 20 percent more sales” into “you need N first-timers a month.” |
| 45 | The best-looking lead source isn’t the best | Track each source all the way through to the sale AND whether they stuck around. Same for each salesperson. |
| 46 | Cross-sell revenue never mined | “Bought A, never bought B” queries that feed automated offers. |
| 47 | No path to bigger purchases | A ladder (free, entry, premium, VIP) with timed nudges, ideally while the first job is still being done. |
| 48 | Discounting regulars who’d pay full price | Ask “first time here?” at the counter and aim promos 3 to 4 miles out, not at the loyal folks two blocks away. |
| 49 | Don’t know where customers come from | Plot customer addresses on a map, build the ideal-customer profile from real records, then hand that whale list to Facebook for look-alike audiences. |
| 50 | No referral engine after a job | A three-letter sequence to the five houses around every job, and endorsed letters written FOR a happy client to send to their circle. |
| 51 | Nothing timed to when people actually need you | Birthday-month mailings, public-record triggers (births, anniversaries, new permits). |
| 52 | The waiting room doesn’t sell | Testimonial binder, success wall, bag stuffers, and a fresh-eyes walkthrough of the whole customer experience. |
| 53 | Broken forms, dead links, busted checkout | A daily robot that mystery-shops every form, link, and phone line and yells when something breaks. |
| 54 | Copy lists features, not outcomes | AI-built customer avatars, a feature-to-benefit generator, quick video sales letters, and one transcript turned into a month of emails and posts. |
| 55 | A competitor just closed | Grab their phone number, their list, their old ad slots, and publicly honor their warranties. |
| 56 | The program dies after six months | Weekly coaching call with an auto-generated summary memo, a maintenance cadence, and canned “what if” playbooks (road construction, manager quits, grand opening). |
| 57 | Overpaying for media | Cost-per-thousand due diligence, remnant and bonus spot negotiation, pooling money with non-competing businesses. |
| 58 | Deals die on the vine | Pipeline stages that each fire their own tasks, plus a monthly “losing interest” report for the owner. |
| 59 | Legal exposure | Proper opt-out handling and a human checkpoint on anything that auto-replies or auto-prices. |
| 60 | A PR blow-up | A four-line phone script and updated voicemail sitting in a drawer BEFORE it’s needed. |
Where to start
One thing I’ve learned: almost none of this is hard technically. The hard part is that nobody in the business has TIME to set it up, and the owner is too close to it to see the pile on the desk.
If I had to pick two, I’d start with #13 (build the database) and #2 (respond instantly to every lead). Every other item is really just another trigger hanging off that same list of people. Get those two right and the rest gets cheap.
Try this today: Go find your own “pile on the desk.” Count the quotes from the last 90 days that nobody followed up on. Multiply by your average ticket. That number is usually all the motivation you need. ⚡
How about you? Which of these 60 made you wince a little? I’d love to hear which one you tackle first. 😊
P.S. Both books are worth the read. Grassroots Marketing is the “what to do in the neighborhood” book. The Automation guide is the “how to make it run without you” book. Read them in that order.
