The Strokes Gained of Volume Effect: Pt 1

Is Non‑Repeat Business a Problem… or a Signal?

I’ve talked before about non‑repeat business, but there’s a deeper question worth asking: is non‑repeat business actually a problem, or is it telling us something useful?

Because here’s the truth we sometimes forget: not all revenue is good revenue.

If the non-repeat business is low‑margin, negative‑margin, or simply misaligned with where you’re trying to take the company, then discontinuing it might actually be a good thing. Sometimes the healthiest move is adjusting the mix—kitting products differently, shifting customers toward higher‑value groupings, or simply letting go of the business that drags down the books.

Those are the kinds of changes we want to be making.

How to Evaluate Non‑Repeat Business More Clearly

To make sense of non‑repeat business, we still want to look at the same customer‑product level information we use everywhere else. The challenge, of course, is that with non‑repeat business you don’t have a clean “before and after” to compare price or margin changes. There’s no base‑period price to anchor to.

So instead, we ask:

What was the average price or margin for this customer‑product combination in the base period—and how does that compare to the non‑repeat transaction?

This gives us a way to approximate what “should” have happened, even without a direct comparison point.

A Day on the Course

One of my favorite examples of why this matters actually comes from one of my favorite games: golf. I could go on about how much I love it—and how much everyone could learn from it—but I’ll save that sermon for another day.

Over the past decade and a half, golf has embraced a metric that completely changed how players understand performance: strokes gained.

Here’s the idea:

  • If you hit an approach shot from 150 yards and leave yourself 30 feet, that’s roughly PGA Tour average. That’s a good shot.
  • But if you hit a shot from 50 yards and also leave yourself 30 feet, a Tour pro would be frustrated. From that distance, 30 feet is well below average.

Before strokes gained, both players would write down the same score—say they both two‑putt for par—and on the card, it all looks identical. Just like revenue: “We made the number.” End of story.

But strokes gained goes deeper. It tells you how you got there. It highlights that one golfer hit an excellent iron shot from 150 yards, while the other hit a poor wedge from 50. That insight helps players understand where they’re strong, where they’re weak, and where to focus their practice.

Why This Matters for Non‑Repeat Revenue

Looking at non‑repeat revenue works the same way.

At first glance, all we see is:
“We lost revenue.”

But the real question is:
What did we actually lose?
Was it good revenue or bad revenue?

  • If we lost high‑margin, high‑volume business from a strong partner, that’s a problem worth solving.
  • If we lost low‑margin, resource‑draining business that never fit well, that’s pruning. That’s healthy.

By going one step deeper—just like strokes gained—we stop judging the outcome alone and start understanding the quality of what changed.

And that’s the real value of breaking down non‑repeat business: it gives us a clearer, more honest picture of what’s happening behind the scenes so we can make smarter decisions going forward.

So the next time you worry about the lost business ask yourself "What did we actually lose?"

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