What's the no 1 key driver to profitable growth?

Guess what's the no 1 thing which drives business growth?

It’s about customers’ willingness to recommend a product or service to someone else aka "Referral via Word of Mouth"

The percentage of customers who were enthusiastic enough to refer a friend or colleague - one of the strongest sign of customer loyalty, correlated directly with differences in growth rates among competitors.

Customers who not only return to rent again but also recommend your products or services to their friends, correlate tightly with profits or growth for your business. No surprise, judging from this nielsen survey which shows which type of advertising is the most influential of all. 

If you are doing survey about customer satisfaction, It turned out that a single survey question can, in fact, serve as a useful predictor of growth. Just don't forget to ask this 

"How likely you are going to recommend our product or service to someone else?"

  

What are the 3 things that's not going to change in your business?

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon famously said this:

"I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two — because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time."

For ecommerce, what's NOT going to change in the next 10, or 20 years? Jeff's mentioned 3 as below, and it starts by asking what your customers will always want:

1. Low Price
2. Fast Delivery
3. Vast Selection

For software (business application) business, what's NOT going to change in the next 10 years? 

Customers will always want software which is

1. Speedy - Nobody likes to use a slow, unresponsive software.
2. Easy to Use - Nobody likes a complicated software, either.
3. Bug Free - Everybody hates bugs!

Out of the 3, if you just focus on speed and ease-of-use, your will have happy customers.

As for "bug free"? There's really no such thing as "bug free" software anyway, unless you are building it for mission to mars. Generally customers are OK if you just fix and improve it fast enough.

屋頂.繁星, Roof.Stars

如果你迷戀厚實的屋頂，就會失去浩瀚的繁星 - 2014
If you are obsessed with the roof, you shall miss all the stars.