As a small business owner, people have very high expectations of you. If your business is just starting, you have to wear several different hats at a time; entrepreneur, owner, manager, staff, salesman, marketing, HR department, and many others. . However, despite the amount of effort and hours put in, 86.3% of small business owners aren’t able to cross the six digits income in a year.
With 32.5 million small businesses in the US, why are many owners unable to make remarkable success for themselves? When you’re putting time and effort into growing your business and becoming successful, why aren’t you able to achieve those goals?
It’s a legitimate question that every other small business owner asks him or herself! The truth is, your business might not be ready for success.
What does it mean for a business to be not ready for success?
Though luck does play a part, success in business is not a mere by-product of accidental growth. One does need to put the right ingredients in the right quantity to position the business on the track to achieving the desired result Therefore, you will have to regularly evaluate your business and see if any essential ingredients are missing.
This can be challenging for a well-qualified team, let alone a single business owner. . To help you do that, here are some of the shortcomings that hinder a business from growing and gaining success. Study them and find out why overcoming these shortcomings is essential for the growth of your business.
Even in the area of personal style, wearing multiple hats is never a good idea. Try to picture it. In running a small business, having more than one hat is not as bad. But each hat brings more responsibility and with it, stress. With just one person managing bills, negotiating with customers, looking after marketing campaigns, taking care of accounts, and more, something gets lost.
You rarely get time to think about the strategic importance of your business and long-term goals, and even think about your business model’s sustainability.
Did you know that 42% of small businesses fail because they enter into the niche having no market demand?
Around 90% of businesses do not have a strategic plan, and it’s one of the reasons why companies are never able to reach their goals. Establishing a detailed strategy for the day-to-day, as well as the future of the company, creates measurable goals for you and your employees to achieve.
Therefore, you have to consider the business strategy, determine growth goals, and create market demand for your services/products. If you don’t plan this today, you won’t be able to optimize business opportunities for tomorrow.
It’s human nature that we are afraid of what is not known. Exactly the same thing happens to businesses, and they’re afraid of change. What will be the outcome of change? Will the change help our business grow? What problems do we have to face during the process?
Change is very crucial for any business organization, small or large. The internal factors can lead to some changes, while most of the changes are driven by external factors like advances in technology, fluctuations in market demand, etc. But the most important change is the change in your outlook about change.
If you have been resisting change because you’re afraid of it, just remember the failure of Kodak, which failed to evolve with advancements in technology. Then remember Nokia, which didn’t do anything wrong, but just delayed the change.
In a survey conducted by HBR in 2018, 2000 managers participated. A whopping 50% responded that they had to reinvent their business every three years or less for the business’s survival. Therefore, it’s time to think differently and positively about the areas of your business calling for a change.
The customer is the ultimate boss!
Ask yourself if you’re ignoring the customer in your business?
Any business creates products and offers services for its customers. The business also has to ensure that its content is focused on helping its target customer base. A relevant question to ask is, “Do you stay in touch with customers and regularly try to get their feedback?”
Do you know about your customers’ likes, dislikes, needs, comfort zones, and preferences?
Are you working on your customer relationships to turn your customers into brand ambassadors?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, you need to reconsider. If you’re not paying enough attention to your customers, it means you’re missing out on repeat business, additional profits, and word-of-mouth marketing. According to statistics by Bain & Company about financial services, every 5% increase in customer retention brings 25% higher profit. The pattern can be practiced in other industries.
If your business processes are too complicated, you may be inviting uncalled trouble to your business sustainability and growth.
How so?
If your sales process is poorly designed, incorrectly implemented, or unnecessarily complex, customer retention can suffer due to frustration. If you have an eCommerce store with an 8-step checkout process, it will quickly frustrate the customer who now begins to question the value of having to fill out every form and follow every step to purchasing a product or service.
Simplify the process for your clients so that they feel delighted to make transactions with you. A sales process should be anywhere between three to seven stages. It should be even more simplified for your sales team to understand and internalize it for online businesses.
How do you know if your process is complicated?
Pay attention to the data and feedback of your customers and sales team. Online businesses can easily track the metrics like retention rate, lead tracking, lead nurturing, etc. Feedback from customers and your sales team is gold and should be valued and respected.
Are you going to be the one running your business in five, ten, or twenty years? Is there an established line of succession in your business? How are you and your team going to continuously reinvent and revive your business in the future? What are your plans to protect your business from external risks and threats?
Future planning and succession planning are necessary to make sure that the business continues long after you are gone from the scene by assuring that the leadership of your business will go into the right hands. Besides, it also shows the dedication and motivation of the business owner to keep the business concern going on.
Planning also prepares the business organization to adapt to any changes in the future, such as technological innovations or the push towards remote working. The strategic planning, change preparation, and future planning of your business are interlinked to each other. Therefore, you must pay attention to these areas if you want your business to grow sustainably.
Every business has to recruit people from the available pool of talent. One problem with your business growth can be underskilled and undereducated talent. As a business owner, you should be confident that your hiring team selects qualified, skilled, and hard-working talent for each position. Hiring the wrong person is a misuse of time, money, and effort, for both the employee and you.
If you’re not treating your employees well and simultaneously paying attention to motivating them, even the best talent from the world would still appear unproductive and inefficient. Therefore, you have to find good talent, train them, treat them well, and retain them for the long-term growth of your business.
How do you look for the right people who will drive the growth of your business?
Look for people who are team players, have a learning spirit, and are dedicated to growing with the business. You can adopt different strategies laid out by HR experts to assess talent. Besides, you can also outsource the recruiting task to the expert firms that can filter the best people for your business.
In the end, you would always rather hire a good fit of character then improve their skills, rather than hiring a skilled person of bad character and work ethic.
If your revenues are not enough to cover the costs, your business will have a difficult time becoming big, successful, or growth-oriented. There are two perspectives of the costs outweighing your revenues. The first perspective is that your revenues are not enough to cover the costs, which implies that your revenue generation is not at par. The second perspective is that your costs are unnecessarily high, and the at-par revenue generation process is failing to cover the costs.
You have to evaluate both sides of the picture and rectify whatever is needed. If your revenue generation is ineffective, it relates to customer relationships, sales process, the right talent, strategic planning, and change. Your revenue generation will automatically improve once you work on the mentioned areas.
On the other hand, if your processes include unnecessary expenses that don’t add value to your business, it’s vital to reevaluate such expenses and give your business the foundation to grow. As a small business, you have to live by the principle of ‘Cash is King.’ Keep your overhead to a minimum, as it’s rightly said that the larger the cash flow of a small business, the higher the stability.
In the 21st century, the world has transformed into a network with no boundaries. Businesses acquire the best talent no matter from which part of the world. The last few years have proven the reliability and effectiveness of remote work. Strategic partnerships are also key to the success of businesses in 2022 and beyond.
As a small business, you have limited resources and expertise. Therefore, you can leverage the strategic partnerships by outsourcing the non-core departments and functions to get enough time to focus on your core business.
An example of this is that a software house can outsource the accounting and bookkeeping job. Another example is the same as we mentioned above about contracting with a recruiting firm for talent acquisition and hiring.
Follow this advice intentionally and you could see improvement within days. To learn how to improve your business beyond these points, ask your customers and prospects for valuable feedback.
Peach BPO is a dedicated service-focused firm specialized in accounting, bookkeeping, payroll management, and staffing assistance. We can help your small business to look beyond the day-to-day tasks and paint your own sky by focusing on your core business skills.
You can give us a call for a free walkthrough of our services!
We Want To Hear From You!
We will happily offer you a free consultation to determine how we can best serve you.
At Peach BPO, your financial success is our highest priority.
Call us today or fill out the contact form to schedule your consultation!
LATEST NEWS
Copyright © Peach BPO Marketing 2022. All Right Reserved
What are you looking for ?
