Subscription barriers – it doesn’t sound positive at all, nor is it if you want to create a strong subscription business.
We have helped over 500 companies develop, optimize and scale a successful subscription business, and we have met a huge number of managers and entrepreneurs who dream of creating their own.
They want to have a business where they do not have to start from zero every month creating revenue, and where the customers are super loyal in order for them not have to constantly spend money in getting the same customers to buy again and again.
They struggle to know how to create a successful subscription business.
When I dig deeper it quickly becomes clear that it is neither technology, processes nor economics that are the biggest challenge to get started. The 3 biggest subscription barriers are often about themselves!
The Top 3 Subscription Barriers are:
✅ COURAGE. The courage to create something new that overtakes the existing business. Although they are not satisfied with the development of the old business model and dream of creating a much more scalable and business-efficiently, they do not have the courage and buccaneering approach to creating a successful subscription business.
It is in a way very human but also super unfortunate. Because sooner or later, one of the competitors takes action, becomes a first mover and snatches all the growth and success. I’ve seen that happen countless times and within many different industries. The brave and visionary player in a particular industry can gain large market shares by being a first mover before the others in the same industry get started!
✅ MINDSET. The needed mindset to understand that in a successful subscription business, it is not about selling goods or services. That is a very old-school way of making money, and usually ensures neither very loyal customers nor an “automatic” recurring income. Some haven’t understood that today it’s not about technicalities or the product itself, it’s about RELATIONSHIPS.
To create as long and deep relations as possible by creating sustained high value for customers so they become members forever. In other words, in a subscription business, it’s about people first! The products and services are just means of creating value. Whether we talk courses, software or cars are offered is secondary to creating a successful subscription business!
✅ KNOWLEDGE. Knowledge of how to create a successful subscription business and unwillingness to spend the time and resources that it takes to get the necessary knowledge. I did you a few years testing to figure out how to make the best strategy to having a successful subscription business. And I still spend a lot of time on this, because things are evolving all the time.
In my expert model, there are 20 steps that together create the development, optimization and scaling of a subscription’s business, with many sub-steps, tips and best practices. Still, I often find people who think that they just need to get a single (free) tip from me, and then they can easily create a successful subscription business from scratch or twist their existing business a bit and succeed with it. They think that they have 80% of the knowledge they need, and in fact they have a maximum of 20% of the necessary knowledge, but they fail to know.
Do you recognize yourself?
Maybe you can recognize yourself in one or more of the 3 subscription barriers?
If it’s courage you’re missing, I can’t help you much, other than encourage you to look around in terms of how the number of subscription stores is popping up everywhere – and will come to YOUR industry as well. As well as the fact that subscription stores are growing on average 5-6 times as fast as traditional outlets, so I encourage your to get on with it.
To learn more about how to create a succesfull subscription business, take a look at my Best Seller book. You can order it right here
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