Imagine I gave your customer £100 extra to spend with your business. But there’s a catch. They’re not allowed to buy more of the thing you already sell. You have to use the money to make the overall experience more valuable. What would you add? More certainty? Faster turnaround? Better onboarding? A useful follow-up? Personalisation? Convenience? Access? A memorable little moment? Something that saves them time? Something that removes anxiety? This is a useful exercise because value isn’t always hiding inside the product. Very often it sits around it. And sometimes the most commercially interesting opportunity is not: “How do we sell more?” It’s: “How could this become more valuable to buy?” Have a play. You may find an idea worth considerably more than £100.

Here’s a useful Friday job that will take you about ten minutes. Go back through this week’s emails, messages, reviews and customer conversations. Look for anything a customer said that provides evidence of the value you create. Not generic praise like: “Brilliant service!” Look for something specific: “You made this much easier.” “We finally understood what we needed to do.” “The team knew exactly what was happening.” “This saved us having to…” “I chose you because…” Those words are useful. They tell you what customers actually value. They can strengthen your messaging. They can reveal benefits you have been underplaying. And, with the customer’s permission where appropriate, they may become far more convincing proof than another paragraph of marketing copy you wrote about yourself. Your customers are constantly giving you clues about how to sell your business better. Make sure somebody is collecting them.

It might explain your week. It does not tell you whether anything got better. Before you close the laptop today, find one piece of evidence that something moved. A sale happened. An enquiry came in. A customer came back. A proposal progressed. A process got quicker. A mistake stopped happening. A difficult conversation finally happened. You created something that will save time next week. Then ask the much more useful question: What did I do that helped cause that? Because success leaves clues inside your own business. If you can identify the behaviour, decision, message, process or conversation that produced a better outcome, you have something you can repeat. Busy disappears. Evidence compounds.

There is a very common stage in a growing business where the founder becomes the invisible quality-control department. You remember the follow-up. You notice when the customer hasn’t been contacted. You spot the mistake before it goes out. You know which detail matters. You jump in because “it’s quicker if I just do it”. And sometimes it is quicker. Once. The problem is what happens when the same thing needs doing fifty more times. So today, notice one thing you keep checking, correcting or rescuing. Then ask: What would need to be clear, documented or owned for me not to have to rescue this next time? Don’t build a 40-page manual. Create one better standard. One clear owner. One less rescue. That’s how the business starts learning to carry its own weight.

Most founders have at least one enquiry, proposal or conversation sitting in the awkward middle ground between “interested” and “gone quiet”. And very often we leave it there because we don’t want to appear pushy. So here’s today’s move. Pick one opportunity you genuinely want to progress and send a useful follow-up. Not: “Just checking in…” Give them something that helps them make the decision. Clarify the next step. Answer the question they may be avoiding. Send a relevant example. Simplify the options. Ask whether the timing has changed. Something like: “When we spoke, the biggest thing you wanted to solve was ____. Is that still the priority, or has something changed since then?” That’s not pressure. That’s a proper commercial conversation. Your job isn’t to chase people until they surrender. It’s to make the next decision easier.