Recent announcements by Starbucks that they will be closing 150 poorly performing stores reminds business owners that managed growth means staying ahead of competition, catering to your market’s preferences, and not poaching customers from your other locations. Most companies, however, will never see Starbucks’ exponential growth and their executives have no desire to dominate the world.

Growth, in short, means different things to different entrepreneurs and does not always entail market domination. Sometimes it simply means the profitable success of a single storefront or office. When making the decision of how to grow your business, you must first decide what growth means.

Contributing to Entrepreneur, R. L. Adams quotes Roland Frasier who states that “only 15 core strategies” truly influence the company’s bottom line. Some are more radical than others, but all require the gumption to take action and the stamina to persevere when encountering obstacles. There will be setbacks. Anticipate them as best you can and figure out ahead of time how you will conquer them.

Writing for The Balance, Susan Ward’s article “How to Grow Your Business: Tried and True Ways” offers advice to make your small business into a big business. Her suggestions overlap with those offered in Adams’ article and focus on customer relationship management, researching the competition, and catering to your target market. Writing for Forbes, Simon Reynolds boils down the tip and tactics to one factor: time spent on sales: “if you’re running a new business you should devote at least 80% of your day to it.”

After all the analyzing of pros and cons, strategies and tactics, the key to business growth is sales. Whether you manufacture a product or provide a service, your income depends upon selling it: someone has to buy what you offer. No sale, no income, no business.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Few businesses grow or even stay in operation without repeat customers. Repeat customers are essential to success. According to RjMetrics, “Beyond the 4th purchase, you’re in the long-tail of customers. You won’t have a ton of these customers, but they represent an enormous amount of value. The top 10% of e-commerce customers are worth 6x the industry average, and the top 1% is worth 18x more.” Rustin Nethercott puts it more simply: Repeat customers spend 300 percent more money and are 60 to 70 percent more likely to purchase from you again. You have only a 13 percent change to sell to a new prospective customer. Nethercott offers another sobering statistic: “It costs five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep a current customer.”

Yes, you must sell to generate revenue and grow your business, but it’s most cost-effective to convert existing clients to repeat clients. Client retention relies upon all those factors that contribute to customer satisfaction: quality of product or service and value. The client has to justify the value for the cost. Attach that value to something the market needs or wants—there is a difference—to sell, resell, and grow.

The Heggen Group understands that business growth requires an ever-evolving strategy. We can help you develop a feasible process to guide success and overcome business challenges.