The "Did You Know?" Question: A Simpler Path to Revenue Growth

Most business owners are quietly avoiding the simplest, most reliable revenue lever they have. They aren't lazy. They aren't unfocused. They've been conditioned to believe that reaching out to a client without a specific reason is "bothering" them. So they wait. The work speaks for itself, they tell themselves. The good clients will call when they need something.

The problem is that this is rarely true. Silence is not service. It's a missed conversation, and missed conversations are where revenue quietly leaks out of a business.

In Outgrow, Alex Goldfayn names this pattern bluntly. After tracking tens of millions of sales behaviors across more than 400 client companies, his finding is that roughly 90% of organizations operate reactively. They take orders well. They respond to issues quickly. But they rarely initiate. The companies that do initiate, even modestly, tend to grow 15 to 30 percent annually, year after year.

The technique that anchors his system is the "Did You Know?" question. It is the closest thing to a real revenue cheat code I have encountered, and it works because it has nothing to do with selling.

Your Customers Don't Know What You Do

Most clients use a fraction of what you actually offer. They came to you for a specific problem, and in their mind, you are "the firm that does X." It doesn't occur to them that you also do Y, even when Y is exactly what they need.

That isn't their oversight. It's yours.

When a client buys a service they need from someone else, the loss isn't only the revenue. It's the relationship gap that opens up. A competitor is now in the conversation. The client is having a sales discussion you weren't invited to, about a problem you could have solved.

This is the gap the "Did You Know?" question is built to close.

Helping, Not Selling

Goldfayn's reframe is what makes the system stick. Reaching out feels like selling, and selling feels intrusive, so we don't do it. The mindset shift is from selling to helping. If your work genuinely creates value, then telling clients what else you can do for them is a service, not an interruption.

Most successful business owners I work with treat their client list less like a database of past transactions and more like a community of people whose work they've taken on a measure of responsibility for. Reaching out is just confirming that what you offered is still working, and asking what else might be in the way.

Examples:

Engineering:

• "Did you know we also do peer review on structural drawings before they go to the building department?"

• "Did you know we offer post-construction site assessments that catch issues before they become warranty claims?"

• "Did you know we just added a value engineering review service for projects that are over budget at the 60% drawing stage?"

Insurance:

• "Did you know we also write umbrella policies for clients with multiple properties or rental income?"

• "Did you know we offer an annual coverage review that usually surfaces 2 or 3 gaps people don't know they have?"

• "Did you know we just launched a small business cyber liability product for companies under 50 employees?"

Home building:

• "Did you know we also handle custom remodels for clients who built with us five or more years ago?"

• "Did you know we offer a one-year walkthrough service that catches settling issues before they become problems?"

• "Did you know we just added a finished basement package for our existing clients at a meaningful discount?"

It isn't a pitch. It's a piece of information. If they need it, they'll say so. If they don't, they'll thank you for the heads up. Either outcome strengthens the relationship.

The numbers behind the technique are unusually strong. Goldfayn's research shows that roughly one in five "Did You Know?" questions converts to a new line item. That is a 20% close rate on what is essentially a 20-second conversation.

How to Run a "Did You Know?" Pass

You don't need a CRM workflow or a marketing budget to start. You need a list, a phone, and the discipline to keep going. The structure is three steps.

1. Build the Inventory of Ignorance

List every service, product, or capability you offer that an existing client might not know about. Don't assume anything is obvious. If you haven't explicitly mentioned a service to a client in the past six months, assume they've forgotten it exists or that they assume it isn't available to them.

This list is the raw material for the entire practice. Most owners are surprised by how long it gets once they actually write it down.

2. Build a Steady Cadence

   
   

This isn't a launch campaign. It's a rhythm. Goldfayn recommends about five minutes a day of intentional outbound activity. For a leadership team running on EOS, the cleanest place to anchor this is the Scorecard. A weekly metric like "Number of 'Did You Know?' Conversations" turns the practice from a good intention into a measured behavior.

If a 90-day Rock makes sense for your team, frame it that way. The point is that the activity becomes visible and accountable, not optional.

3. Make the No-Ask Call

The structural beauty of "Did You Know?" is that there is no ask. You're not closing. You're informing.

The opener is a version of: "I was thinking about you because I know you've been working on X, and it occurred to me you might not know we also handle Y. Wanted to make sure that was on your radar."

That's the entire move. If they want to talk about it, they will. If they don't, you've still strengthened the relationship by demonstrating that you think about their business between invoices.

Why Most Teams Don't Do This

The barrier isn't strategy. The barrier is fear of rejection, dressed up as professionalism.

Goldfayn is direct about this in Outgrow. He estimates that two-thirds of his consulting work is mindset work, not behavior change. The behaviors are simple. The thinking that prevents the behaviors is what makes the work hard. Salespeople and owners alike avoid outbound activity because they have over-internalized the idea that they might be a nuisance.

The data tells a different story. Customers don't feel pestered by the vendors who reach out to them. They feel ignored by the ones who don't. The vendor who calls to say "I noticed you haven't ordered in a while, just wanted to check in" is, in nearly every case, the only one doing it.

That is the competitive advantage hiding in plain sight.

Measure the Behavior, Not Just the Outcome

The deepest move in Outgrow isn't the question itself. It's what Goldfayn does with the data.

Most companies track lagging indicators: closed deals, monthly revenue, win rate. Goldfayn argues you should track the leading indicator that actually predicts those numbers. Every "Did You Know?" question is a swing of the bat. You can't control whether the customer says yes, but you can absolutely control how many you ask.

If your team asks 100 "Did You Know?" questions in a quarter, the math says roughly 20 become new line items. That is a forecastable, repeatable system, not a hope.

For teams running on EOS, this fits the Scorecard model exactly. You measure swings, not just hits. When the swings drop, you know about it weeks before revenue does, and you can intervene.

Start Today

You don't need a strategy session for this. You need to make a list and pick up the phone.

1. Identify your top 10 clients. The people who already know and trust you.

2. For each one, name a service you offer that they aren't currently using and would plausibly benefit from.

3. Call. Use the "Did You Know?" framing. Don't pitch. Just inform.

4. Listen. Sometimes the call becomes a sale. Sometimes it surfaces a problem you didn't know about. Both are wins.

Goldfayn's full system has more layers, including reverse "Did You Know?" questions, quote follow-ups, and structured tracking. But the simplest entry point is the one above. Ten calls. Ten pieces of information offered. The math will take care of the rest.

The companies that grow consistently are not the ones with the best marketing. They are the ones whose customers hear from them more often than they hear from anyone else. In a market saturated with automated email and AI-generated outreach, a brief human conversation is the highest-leverage move available to a small business owner.

Stop being your industry's best-kept secret. Make the list. Make the calls.