Insights for Business Growth in 2026 - 11th Dec 2025 Fireside Chat

11th Dec 2025 Fireside Chat

During our 11th Dec 2025 Fireside Chat, we covered a wide range of topics by our guest speakers. I feel that the topics covered are helpful for many SME owners, hence I decided to publish it on this blog article.

My memories of their answers are somewhat blurred by the combined effect of beer (during the event itself) and time, hence you should expect an incomplete sharing compared to the evening itself. The answers will be in the form of combined replies rather than individual, to cover up the gap in my memory.

Anne Lehman - Former exit Entrepreneur, who is currently a business growth consultant

Marianna Olefyrenko - Serial entrepreneur, founder of Easy-Peasy.AI (Provide AI solutions that improve productivity)

Dennis Poh - Founder of Legatcy (Provide accounting and fractional CFO service)

Percy Hung - Serial entrepreneur, founder of Choco up (Provide revenue base financing to SMEs)

Question: What are your take on the economy in 2025 and 2026?

Answer: In 2025 while the marco economy looks robust on the surface, only a few sectors are truly doing well. e.g. Semiconductor, Finance, etc. The mainstream industries are facing significant headwind e.g. F&B, manufacturing, retail

Whereas in 2026, the outlook of most SMEs remain cautious. It has become more evident that only by embracing AI, can SME become more productive and able to increase their market outreach.

Question: In the particular year that your organization has an exponential growth, what are the catalyst?

Answer: Answers differ widely from different speakers. Capitalizing one main market where customers are not price sensitive and highly receptive towards Saas product - US market. It provided them with exponential growth opportunity.

For another, it is the re-evaluation of existing market, reducing their footprint and doubling down on a few key markets. For the 3rd and 4th speaker, it is to be attentive to the changes of your market and to seize the opportunity to adapt promptly. Exponential growth being the combination of multiple factors: Right time, right place and right offer.

Question: What are the essential growth levers for >30% growth rate? Is it through new markets, new products/services, price optimisation, or significantly higher retention?

Answer: >30% growth rate means something radically new to your business. A new sales channels, a new market or a new offer. Price optimisation and client retention will impact your bottom line positively generating cash for other sources of growth. But it is unlikely to generate >30% top line growth.

Question: How to translate the 30% growth goal into actionable, measurable metrics (e.g., Average Deal Value, Customer Acquisition Cost, Sales Cycle Length) that the entire team can rally around.

Answer: Align your team on targets such as: % of returning customers/ income: ensure it corresponds to a minimal churn for your business. Another key metrics is the sales activity: Number of clients/ prospects visits coupled with the pipeline of revenue per visit, and importantly, the closing rate: set a target at least equal to you own closing rate because you do not want to remain the main sales person of your company.

Question: What are the low-risk ways for SMEs to test new market?

Answer: Utilise paid advertisement to test the demand of the new product or market. e.g. running Facebook advertisement on weekends. Doing soft launch of products with existing customers, create landing pages and dedicated campaigns to test any market, product or pricing.

If you are proposing industrial solutions that do not allow digital agility, enrol 3 to 5 key prospects to co-develop and assess an MVP that they will be given at cost or even for free for the 1st x months.

Work with partners on revenue-share model e.g. agencies. This reduces expense and create a win-win scenario for both parties. Utilize free tier strategy before rolling out regionally.

Question: Is your company sales founder-led? How do you make the shift from purely relationship-based selling to a systemised sales process? How to train, incentivise, and retain a high-performing, lean sales team?

Answer: Transition from founder-led sales to marketing first strategy, this allow the team to step up and handle the sales enquiry and conversion. Create a self-service sales conversion channel such as a freemium model, which essentially allow customers to trial for free during a limited period of time before charging them money.

For the hiring of salesperson, you need to create a robust sales recruitment framework that evaluate all the fundamental ability needed for a high potential sales hire. e.g. listening skill, discernment ability, right level of motivation and coachability. Be committed to training them on the skills and methodology of a sales executive. If you find that you hire the wrong person, be ready to let them go asap.

Next Article: Why You should Hire A Salesperson? And How To? - A Guide For Small Business in Singapore

Question: Evaluating the high cost of new customer acquisition vs. the low cost of retention. Discuss about strategies for maximizing Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to ensure sustainable, non-stop sales growth.

Answer: Utilise CRM (customer relationship management system) to keep proper record of customer engagement. There are a few popular ones in the market. e.g. HubSpot, SalesForce, Zoho, Odoo, Monday.com

Create a customer support team that is able to address customers concern. Systematically survey your client on their satisfaction. Ask what could be improved and apply as much as possible. If your business model permits, visit your clients regularly, even with no reason just to check how are things going. Create opportunities for interactions. If you are on a volume online business, create communities and get leaders to support that channel. In short: once you convert a prospect into a client you must remain in touch with him/her to generate more sales and peers recommendations.

While retention of all your customers are not possible, reducing churn rate to less than 5% is definitely achievable.

Question: Many SME owners are resource-constrained. Can you share a low-cost, high-impact sales strategy you've seen work specifically in the Singapore/Southeast Asian context?

Answer: Partner with agencies / system integrators / affiliate partners to acquire customers at a low-cost. You can choose to pay out a referral fee or adopt a revenue share model. A good example is Wise. (They get their customer to share a unique referral invite link with their friends. When their friends sign up with the link, they get a sign-up gift). Run joint-marketing event to increase outreach of customers and reduce cost of customer acquisition.

Conduct a qualitative research to identify the segment that work best for your sales. Understand your customers unique characteristics, and look for other segments with similar traits and run dedicated campaigns on those. Similarly, identify those segments and channels that do not convert at all and stop them. Identify similar characteristics to search for the same in poorly performing segments. In short, analyse your sales from a qualitative perspective to better target your effort.

Question: To hit 30%, we need to talk about pricing. How can an SME owner re-evaluate their pricing model in 2026 to capture more value without losing their existing customer base?

Answer: Most SME owners tend to make the mistake of underpricing their products or services. By utilising on sales analytics and customer surveys, you get insights that will allow you to test and adapt your pricing strategy for new products/ market. Focus on product excellence and content dominance to improve their value proposition to their customers.

Next Article: Pros and Cons of Buying a Business in Singapore: A Guide for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

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