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What would a 5% improvement actually be worth?
There are only seven numbers that move profit in any business. Put yours in and this shows you what a small improvement in each one is worth, and which single number is worth most to you. Most owners guess it is more leads. For most, it is not.
Your numbers
This works out automatically as you type. If nothing changes when you type, the worked example further down the page shows how the arithmetic goes.
On those numbers, your net profit is$146,454
Seven of those you can actually change. Move one at a time, leave the rest alone, and this is what each is worth:
Why the order surprises people
Nearly every owner assumes the answer is more leads, because leads are the thing you can go and buy. But leads sit at the front of a chain, and everything after them leaks. Winning one more quote in ten, or getting the same customers back one extra time, often beats spending money on advertising, and it usually costs nothing but attention.
The two cost levers behave differently again. A percentage point off your materials, or a few thousand off overheads, lands on the bottom line whole. Nothing eats it on the way down. That is why they often outrank the sales levers even though they feel less exciting.
You will notice some levers give exactly the same answer. Winning more quotes and getting more enquiries are worth the same, and so are selling more often and charging more per job, because in each pair the two numbers multiply the same line. The arithmetic cannot separate them. What separates them is how hard each one is to actually do, and that is a conversation rather than a calculation.
How the arithmetic works
No forecasting and no assumptions. It is one equation, run twice:
- Customers you kept, plus enquiries multiplied by your win rate, gives total customers.
- Total customers, multiplied by jobs per year, multiplied by average job value, gives sales.
- Take off materials and subbies as a share of sales, then take off overheads. What is left is net profit.
Then it improves one number by the percentage you chose, leaves the other six alone, and runs it again. The difference is what that lever is worth.
What this is not
It is arithmetic on the numbers you typed, not a forecast and not advice. It assumes the levers move independently, which in a real business they do not: cutting price to win more quotes moves two numbers at once, and chasing volume can push overheads up. Business Edge Advisors does not warrant that the output is complete, accurate or suitable for any particular purpose. Nothing here is financial or tax advice.
Want to do this with your actual numbers?
The version we run with clients uses your real figures out of Xero rather than estimates, and looks at which levers you can realistically move in ninety days. That is most of a morning in Planning 4 Success, or you can just book a time and we will go through it.
About this tool. Built by the team at Business Edge Advisors, Registered Tax Agent 20651000. The numbers you type stay in your browser and are not sent anywhere. Last reviewed 5 September 2026.
So what would you do with that number?
Working out what a five per cent improvement is worth is the easy half. The hard half is deciding which of the seven levers you can actually move this year, and in what order. That is the conversation we have in March, while there is still a quarter left to do something about it.