Playing the What-If game can be extraordinarily beneficial to your business. It’s something that you can play alone or together with your team or co-founders. Just find that business plan of yours and see how your company could be reshaped if one of your key partners would cease to exist, or if you’d have only 30% of your current budget for paying your workers. By removing one or more of the building blocks of your business plan, you will find solutions for creating and capturing value in new ways.

Most business owners believe that their business can exist only if they can count on all the things they listed in their initial business plan. Still, the truth is that companies evolve all the time, and business plans need to adapt. You can speed up business innovation by analysing your business plan and asking yourself three questions that might lead you to some exceptional answers.

The top questions that spark business innovation are:

1. What would happen if you would start to charge your customers twice as much as you do now? Don’t shake your head yet. Just think about it. Would most of them still want to buy your products or service? It’s just a question. What would happen?

The thing is that if you would lose only 30% of your current customers, you would still make more money than you’re making now. Let’s say you have 200 customers that are paying $160 for your service every month. If you would double the price, you could make $64,000 per month. If you’ll lose 30% of your customers because your price increased, you would still make $44,800 per month, and that is more than the $32,000 you were making thanks to your 200 customers charged at the initial price.

2. What new services could your company offer on top of your current value proposition? If this question makes you go “hmmm” and scratch your chin, maybe there are other services you can create and sell by using your current team, skills, and resources. How much would you charge for those new services? How many of your existing customers would want to buy a new service?

Let’s say your company sells web design services, could you have your designers edit images for the social media channels of your current clients? How much would you charge for delivering the necessary pictures for the content your buyers are publishing on their brand Facebook pages every month? How long would it take your designers to complete the task? Does it make financial sense?

3. How could your company minimize its fixed costs? This is a difficult one; we’ll give you that. Try thinking about it in another way – what is the least expensive way to have an office for your team?

Because we’re in the outsourcing business, we’ll use BPO as an example in which entrepreneurs are minimizing their fixed costs. Think if you could outsource a part of the services you’re selling. Could your business have some remote staff members based in a developing country?

Let’s say you need to hire a social media community manager. That employee’s yearly salary would cost you $45,000 – AUD 65,000. Do you need to have the community manager in your office? If not, you can hire one of the best social media managers and community managers in the Philippines (which are native English speakers) at just AUD 13,500 per year without having to pay any benefits. Only by hiring a remote social media community manager, you could save up to AUD 51,500 per year, the money you can add to your yearly profit.

Maybe the list of questions to spark innovation for your company looks a bit different. Still, they all have one thing in common – they start with the removal or revision of a building block of your business plan – your resources, product, distribution, revenue model, partners.

Please let us know in a comment what question is the one to make you see your business in a new light.