Keeping It Simple
The fastest, simplest ways to grow your business - no jargon, no fluff. Practical strategies that actually work for SME owners in the USA, New Zealand, and worldwide.
Monday, October 05, 2026
There is no single best business coach in the USA. Here are five criteria for choosing one, a fair look at the main formats, and why an outside perspective can change what you see in your own business.
Every October, SME owners start the same ritual: squeeze a bit more budget for ads, chase a few more cold leads, hope Q4 closes bigger than Q3. Meanwhile, sitting in the CRM, there's a list of people who already bought, already trusted the business enough to hand over money once, and haven't been asked back. If you want more customers without spending more on ads, the fastest list to work is the one you already own. Kevin D'Ambros-Smith has run sales operations inside nine companies of his own and coached over two hundred SME owners since 2017, and the lapsed-customer list is one of the most consistently under-used assets he finds in a business's data.
The New-Lead Bias
The enemy isn't laziness, it's a bias: growth feels like it should come from somewhere new. New leads feel like progress. Reaching back out to someone who stopped buying feels like admitting you lost them. So marketing budget and sales hours go toward strangers, while a warmer, cheaper, faster list sits untouched.
Bain and Company's long-running loyalty research, built on Frederick Reichheld's work, puts the economics plainly: winning a genuinely new customer typically costs five to twenty-five times more than bringing back one who has already bought from you before. A lapsed customer isn't a loss on the books. They're the cheapest sale available to you this quarter, if someone simply asks.
The Win-Back Sequence
This is the four-step sequence Kevin runs with Simple-Growth clients heading into their last and biggest selling quarter of the year.
- Segment - pull everyone who bought once and hasn't since, and sort them by what they spent and how long it's been. Your top 20 percent by value get a phone call, not an email.
- Reconnect - the first message is a genuine check-in, with no offer attached. Ask how things are going for them, not what they'll buy.
- Re-offer - follow with one specific, time-bound reason to come back: a relevant new option, a loyalty gesture, a deadline that's real.
- Remove - anyone who doesn't respond after a fair, respectful sequence comes off the active list. Clean data converts better than a bloated one.
“Kevin is an absolute powerhouse! He doubled our business's profits in the first month alone with lots more of his recommendations still to be rolled out.”
— Curtis Hacon, Give A Sh!T
Why Owners Skip the Easiest Call on the List
Most sales teams know this list exists. They avoid it because reaching out to someone who stopped buying feels like it's inviting a rejection the team would rather not hear, and because there's no obvious deadline pushing them to do it today. New leads at least feel urgent, even when they convert slower and cost more.
A good coach's job here isn't a new sales trick. It's putting a date on the calendar, a target number on the list, and someone accountable for making the calls, because the list itself was never the problem. The absence of a deadline was. Most sales teams can recite the top line of this quarter's new-business target from memory. Almost none of them could tell you, without checking, how many lapsed customers are sitting in the CRM right now, which is usually the first sign the wrong list is getting all the attention.
Quick Wins
- Pull every customer who bought once and hasn't bought again in the last 6 to 12 months.
- Sort that list by total spend and call your top 20 personally this week.
- Write one message with a genuine, specific, time-bound reason to come back, not a generic discount.
- Set a target number for reactivated customers this quarter, and give one named person the job of hitting it.
Key Takeaways
- Reactivating a lapsed customer is typically five to twenty-five times cheaper than winning a brand-new one.
- Run the Win-Back Sequence: Segment, Reconnect, Re-offer, Remove.
- Call your highest-value lapsed customers personally before the quarter ends, don't rely on email alone.
- The list isn't the obstacle. The missing deadline is.
- Give the reactivation list the same weekly attention as the new-business pipeline, not an afterthought.
The list of past customers sitting in your CRM right now is worth a phone call before it's worth another ad dollar.
Kevin D’Ambros-Smith
Kevin is the founder of Simple-Growth and a business growth coach with experience at DDB, Ogilvy, and Saatchi & Saatchi. He has co-founded 9 companies, coached 200+ business owners one-on-one, and holds a 9.5/10 NPS. Every article on this blog reflects real-world experience - no theory, no fluff.
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Monday, October 05, 2026
There is no single best business coach in the USA. Here are five criteria for choosing one, a fair look at the main formats, and why an outside perspective can change what you see in your own business.
Monday, October 05, 2026
Eighty-four percent of small business owners sacrifice health or relationships to their business, new 2026 data shows. Here is the Transferability Number test that shows why, and what to fix first.
Monday, October 05, 2026
You're about to have your busiest quarter of the year. If nobody's planned for it, your bank balance is about to go the wrong way at exactly the moment the business looks like it's winning.
Monday, October 05, 2026
Ask most owners what they do and they'll answer instantly. Ask them why their business exists, beyond making money, and watch the pause. That pause is costing you customers, hires and referrals.
Monday, October 05, 2026
Ask your team to name the business's single most important goal this quarter. Five different answers from five people means you have one problem, not twelve: nobody knows what the goal actually is.
Monday, October 05, 2026
You trained your team to build rapport and never push, and your best customer last quarter still went with the competitor who pushed them to rethink the brief. Here's why relationship-selling is the weakest profile in B2B sales.
Monday, October 05, 2026
You've boosted the posts, hired the agency, rewritten the website twice, and the phone still isn't ringing. Before you spend another dollar, ask whether a stranger could explain what makes you different in one sentence.
Monday, October 05, 2026
Your competitor just launched the move you'd been 'finalising' for six months. Here's the fifty-year-old decision framework that fixes the real problem: not your strategy, your decision speed.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
EOS, Scaling Up, Vistage, ActionCOACH or Simple-Growth? A fair comparison with best-for and not-ideal-if for each option, a fit matrix and a nine-question quiz.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
What does a business coach cost in New Zealand? Published monthly and hourly ranges, cheaper options, how RBPN co-funding can help, and a checklist for judging value.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
New 2026 global research shows trust alone only earns a brand 48 percent acceptance into new territory - relevance takes it to 71 percent. Here is the two-question test that finds the real gap before you spend on expansion.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
The personal touch that built your reputation at ten staff quietly becomes the bottleneck that breaks it at thirty. Here is how to turn a habit into a system before it costs you.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Most owners check star ratings and warm adjectives before hiring a coach. Here is the three-detail test that tells you whether a review is evidence or decoration.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
The Christmas shutdown is about eleven weeks away. Here is the one-page-per-role handover document that decides whether you actually switch off this year.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
The biggest sales research study ever run found the best reps ask, they don't tell. Here is the SPIN method, and the four questions that come before any pitch.