Starting a new business from scratch is tough enough in and of its own if you take into account all of the bureaucracy and red tape and expenses involved in the process.
Imagine, then, committing every business-killing mistake in the book right off the bat? Your chances of getting somewhere with your entrepreneurial venture will look fairly slim, indeed.
Of course, starting a business is a pretty brave and commendable thing to do, but that doesn’t mean that you should just start swinging willy-nilly once you’ve entered the market hoping everything will turn out dandy somehow.
The thing is, if you’re young and are only starting your first business, there may be a bit of an experience void going on, but this is understandable. In fact, it’s being aware of it and willing to act to navigate around it that will help you go through your teething phase more easily and smoothly.
In this article, we’re going to talk about common obstacles that hamper businesses and that can even do them completely if they are not addressed and dealt with promptly.
Right then folks, without further ado, here’s the deal.
Ways to Overcome the Obstacles That Kill Businesses
… and make frugality a core value for your business.
When you first start organizing your online premises, start working on your website, and start building up your business in general, you may feel tempted to spend more than you have, so that everything will look top-notch.
While this is understandable, it’s also important to remember that you’re not working with a limitless budget and that running a business is about earning money rather than spending it.
Of course, there are times when you’ll have to spend more than you would like (such as emergencies, for example), but if you make it a rule in your company to save money wherever possible, you’ll put your business on a path of assured success, no doubt about it.
2) Set High Standards When It Comes to Choosing Employees
How well your employees perform on their positions is going to determine the dynamic of your company’s growth and how your customers perceive you, so it’s important to pay attention to how they’re handling their workload and obligations. Also, it’s important to monitor how you’re treating your employees.
This is more a question of character and work discipline than of skills, as it’s not much use having a highly-skilled person to work with if they’re insubordinate and disinterested in their work.
So, if you see a pattern of negative behavior in some of your employees, be sure not to tolerate it for too long, otherwise, you may run the risk of undermining your own authority in the process.
Insubordination and waywardness should be nipped in the bud so that your other employees can see that you mean business and that you’re serious about your undertaking. A strong-minded and just employer is a person employees can look up to and gladly work for, especially in the long run.
3) Keep Your Prices Competitive
One of the worst teething troubles of a new business is disregarding your environment and the market around you.
Now, the way this manifests itself the most often would be in the inability to figure out how to price your products or services.
The thing is, no matter how good your products are if your competition offers the same thing that’s perhaps not as good but for half the price, you run the risk of alienating your target audience right off the bat.
There’s another aspect to price mismanagement here, of course, and that would be underpricing. While lower prices will surely attract more customers, you have to be careful not to drop your prices too low, because that has the potential to hamper your progress and financial gain even if you are making a decent amount of sales.
What’s more, dropping prices for no particular reason can even backfire badly, because your potential customers may start thinking you’re doing this because your products aren’t that good in the first place. Talk about a double whammy.
4) Keep It as Simple as Possible
Attempting to be the Jack of all trades can be troublesome for a business owner.
Not only is it not possible, but it often demands time, resources, and energy to bend over backward so you can secure this thing or another for your business you don’t need anyway.
For example, if your immediate audience is in Australia and most of your customers come from there, translating your website into Dutch, Estonian, and Portuguese would be an unnecessary expenditure.
On the other hand, investing in a website optimization strategy through SEO, for example, is always a safe bet. If you aren’t sure how to do this yourself, you can always hire the help of a group of professionals. If you’re from Australia, you can contact a local SEO agency from Brisbane.
Of course, as your business grows, you will want to expand its online venues, build on the way you interact with your customers or maybe open up more local shops, but if you’re going to do that – you have to commit to it and plan for it in advance. Otherwise, you run the risk of trying to have it all too soon, which can quickly drain your budget, energy, and drive your business into a nasty cul-de-sac.
5) Be Prepared to Abandon What Is Not Working
Once you’ve established your business, you will have to try out some growth as well as marketing strategies to be able to understand what is working and what is not working.
It’s what makes running a business exciting and rewarding and here you can truly display your entrepreneurial spirit and talents.
That said, there’s a catch here.
While it’s important to be hard-working and persistent, you have to also know when to abandon an incentive that’s not yielding any results. Giving up on a bad business path that doesn’t bring you profits is nothing to be ashamed about, and it’s what sets great business people from the rest of the bunch.
All things considered, as long as you put in the necessary hard work, resources, and your willingness to learn along the way, your business will slowly but surely develop and grow larger. As you can see, being at the helm of a business is more about avoiding icebergs than having some sort of special talent, so as long as you can steer clear from the aforementioned business-killing mistakes, you’ll be good to go.
