Most companies look outward when they want a breakthrough. They invest in new technology, new specialists, new systems built to outpace the competition, but that search can often point in the wrong direction while the real breakthrough may already be sitting inside the business.
On today’s episode of Strategic Edge, Jay Abraham, Executive Coach and CEO of The Abraham Group, explains how owners can tap into what he calls “non-technical breakthrough thinking.” Businesses don’t need new tools to grow, he says; they need to look more closely at what they already do, who they do it with, and how they do it.
Every business already runs on a revenue system
According to Abraham, every company, whether it runs a full marketing operation or simply relies on walk-in traffic, operates a revenue system. That system includes an audience, a way of reaching that audience, a proposition, and a transactional process that follows.
"You got all these leverage points that cost you nothing to improve. It just costs you knowing what to do different."
Most business owners tend to overlook their operational systems, primarily tracking Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). However, KPIs only reflect past performance. Instead, Abraham emphasizes the importance of Overlooked Performance Impact factors (OPIs). These are the crucial levers within strategy, marketing, sourcing, and processes that can drive results without incurring additional costs.
Abraham points out that small adjustments in areas such as capital use, human capital, and the way a company presents its value to customers can lead to significant improvements in outcomes. He gave an example of a test his team ran at a furniture store, where staff tried 33 different ways of greeting customers at the front door. He said one version tripled conversion and raised the average sale.
The cost of assumption
Most businesses default to what Abraham calls catatonic assumption. They accept their current results as fixed rather than testing whether a different approach might work better.
He recalled a company during the dot-com era that wanted to grow its traffic from 20,000 visitors to 40,000, even though it was converting only 1% of those visitors into customers.
“Why wouldn’t you first want to convert 2% or 3% or 5% of the 20,000?” Abraham said.
The company had assumed its conversion rate was fixed and that growth had to come from acquiring more visitors. Abraham said that assumption cost the business a far cheaper path to the same result.
Leverage that’s already built in
Non-technical leverage isn’t a new concept, even outside business, Abraham said. People already rely on it every day without thinking of it in those terms, using simple tools that multiply effort far beyond what hands alone could accomplish.
He pointed to a broom, a wheelbarrow, a jack, and a pop-top can as examples. Each one takes a basic task and makes it dramatically easier, without requiring any technical skill to use. The same principle scales into business, just with far more levers available and far more at stake.
Meaningful growth usually comes from re-examining what a business already has, not from chasing something new, Abraham said. The breakthrough most businesses are looking for often sits inside the business already, waiting to be tested.
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