In the first part of our breakdown on the Flywheel Model, we discussed what it is, how it works and how it can accelerate your business growth. If you have not read Part 1, click here to learn the basics before we dive deeper.
To continue where we left off, we will learn how to put the Flywheel in action and get it to start spinning. We will also be discussing what can slow or stop the Flywheel and how to avoid these issues!
“By increasing the quality of your customer experience, your business will slowly start to pick up momentum and eventually start working by itself through your customers.”
To get the Flywheel to start spinning in the first place, your team will all need to start pushing the wheel in the same direction. This means the entire team will have to realign their goals to prioritise building a great customer experience and learn to communicate with each other. If your team is not addressing these initial hurdles, it will be much harder to start turning the wheel.
To do this, your business will need disciplined people, disciplined thought and disciplined action. Having disciplined people means employing the right leaders who can guide the team and smoothen out any discrepancies. Disciplined thought is being able to establish your business’s core value (what your business is best at) and to confront and resolve the real issues in your business. Disciplined action means only pursuing things that support your business’s core value and exploring new technologies to advance your business. With these three key factors, your Flywheel can start to turn.
Like we mentioned in our previous article, you can increase the speed of your Flywheel by introducing different tactics at each stage. We mentioned a couple of suggestions as to what can be improved in each area of the wheel, so feel free to refer back and see which ones are suitable for you to implement! But, to improve the speed of your Flywheel, you need to know which part is slowing you down and address it, rather than investing more into areas that are already doing well.
To do this, review your business and find out which areas customers drop off and fail to complete the entire journey of the model. These are the areas that need working on—they lack customer experience and are limiting your Flywheel’s speed. These hurdles that slow your Flywheel down are known as friction, and if they are not addressed, they could completely break your momentum and stop your wheel. Keep in mind that all parts of the wheel are equally important so if one area is not working well, it will be much harder to get it to start turning by itself!
Some causes of these frictions are due to team issues mentioned previously, like misalignment of goals, which can be combatted with disciplined people, thought and action. Another way friction occurs is due to the poor structure of teams and internal processes. To prevent this, ensure that the marketing, sales and customer service teams communicate and work together to provide a streamlined customer experience. These three areas need to reflect to see how they can benefit themselves and each other.
By answering and resolving these questions, you should find that more customers continue through the full journey and add force to your wheel by repurchasing or referring others.
Here is a quick overview of what we have learnt so far. The Flywheel model is a business model centred around customers and customer experience. Its key feature is that by increasing the quality of your customer experience, your business will slowly start to pick up momentum and eventually start working by itself through your customers. You can ‘push the wheel’ by building your customer experience in marketing, sales and customer service through various tools. Things that could slow your wheel down are labelled as friction and these include having misaligned goals, not communicating between teams or not resolving issues in certain parts of the wheel.
In our next article, we will take a look at the Flywheel model in comparison with the classic Funnel model and weigh out the pros and cons of each one! If you are interested in applying the Flywheel model to your business, let us help! Schedule a 15 mins call with our lead Marketing Consultant today to find out more.
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