Too often than not small biz owners, who have a remarkable business offering, loads of motivation and are keen to work hard give up after a couple of years, when they deem their business failed.
If we look back at APPLE as an example, where would they be today if they had given up?
Small biz owners do make mistakes, do run out of capital, clients, and energy to carry on, but this is really sad because if those small biz owners just took the time to analysis what went wrong they would definitely be on the road to success.
Data suggests that bad planning, or no planning at all is one of the major reasons SMB's fail.
Another suggestion why SMB's fail is greed, yes greed. The business has a great start, everything is moving forward, the clients are coming along fast and furious, but keeping up with the marketing, networking and other important related aspects of the business slide and noone is looking after this important aspect of the business.This is the beginning of the end.
Greed is a nasty word, but we are human, and if we see our clients in front of us and they want what we have to offer who are we to argue? But, if we thought for a moment about what happens when those clients are no more? There will be a similar offering to yours that comes along and clients can be very disloyal and walk away. But, the question is, why did your clients not stay loyal to you?
Did you continue to contact your existing clients and offer them new and different benefits? Did you keep in touch with your existing clients to make sure they were OK, happy with your offering, but if they needed any help they knew you were there for them? Two examples of what busy SMB's forget to do when they are chasing the money, to pay the bills, which runs out eventually because they lose most of their clients in a very short time.
Greed can make you forget how to work smarter, not harder. How can you find the time to continue to network and make new connections. You can't you are too busy with your clients and working hard to take their money, you forgot that there are other clients out there who have no idea who you are. A big mistake is relying on the clients you have already to spread the word about you, obviously they have more time than you to do that. Those clients will definitely refer you, even if they have not heard from your organization since you made the sale.
People have short memories, you might have been the most popular small biz out there in the early years, but other smarter small biz owners have come along and taken the spotlight away from you along with your customers.
Not keeping up with new technology, even if you are not an IT company, not keeping up with new trends, how the economy is doing, how other small businesses are doing and simply, not keeping up with the times. You are busy, is is understandable how can you find time to do all that.
Back to the drawing board, where you have your business plan, or not. Your short and long term goals, or not. You get the idea.
If you are looking for ideas to help yourself look around you, see what other small biz owners are doing. Are they using the barter system, you do my accounting I will take care of your graphic design, as an example. Are they looking into grants, small biz loans to see if they have enough capital to move forward. Are they networking and building relationships of trust on a consistent basis?
I call it building your foundations, others call it planning. We can never know the future, but if you can plan for your success, surely you can plan for your failure not to happen?
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