Businesses fail for many different reasons, but some of those reasons are avoidable. Here are six tips for fool proofing your business and staying afloat.
It can be hard to start your own business and even harder still to keep that business running successfully. There’s so much competition these days that customers don’t know where to spend their limited funds, and they can decide to go to one of your competitors at the drop of a hat. Fortunately, there are a few different things you can do to help foolproof your business. While it may be impossible to say that your business is 100 percent foolproof from everything, these six tips for success will help keep you safe and secure from many of the most common reasons why a business fails.
1. Keep it Focused on the Customer
Keeping your customers happy is even more important than it ever has been. Thanks to the internet and social media, one unhappy customer can spread their negative reviews to thousands or even millions of potential customers before you even know about it. That’s why it’s important to make certain your business is focused on the customer. Here are some of the things you can do to keep your customers satisfied:
- Offer quality products
- Have a clear return or grievance process
- Be timely with all communication
- Quickly respond to any issues and provide a solution as soon as you can
- Engage customers online through social media
- Acknowledge negative reviews/social media posts and work with the customer to overcome the problem.
Businesses that get too focused on making a profit may find that they’re losing some of their customers due to their attitude. It’s also possible to start to fail by focusing on something good. For example, a business that becomes so focused on being environmentally friendly to the point that they replace every piece of equipment at once may find that they’ve over-spent and are now in financial trouble. Even though going green is a good move and may attract more customers, it may be better to slowly make the move rather than doing it all at once.
2. Hire and Retain the Best
Many small business owners may not have the funds to hire a huge staff, and even if you do, this is still a true statement: you want to hire the best. Hiring anyone less than the best candidate for the job is essentially wasting money unless you truly feel that the best candidate is the one person who simply wouldn’t fit with the rest of your team. Hiring someone who isn’t a great fit can be worse than hiring someone who isn’t as sharp as you’d like.
But once you hire a great candidate, you have to keep and retain your customer. That’s another tip to keeping your business on track: you have to keep your great employees. This means providing them with a workspace in which they are comfortable, providing incentives (both financial and other) for them to stay, and making them feel like they have a stake in the company.
3. Get Away from Traditional Phones
This may sound like an odd tip, but it’s a situation that many small businesses find themselves in: they’re paying too much money for a phone system that they may hardly even use. That’s why many are switching to cloud PBX systems. These phone systems make use of Voice over IP and can be customized to your needs. There’s little upfront costs and virtually no cost to maintain the system, unlike with traditional phones. Employees can even route their business numbers to their own cell phones or through their computers, so you don’t have to buy any equipment and you can take your business number on the go with you.
4. Pick the Office Space you Need
Many new business owners see an amazing office space for rent and jump on it only to later discover that it doesn’t meet their needs at all. Maybe it’s too small, or maybe it doesn’t have enough storage, or maybe it’s simply not in the right part of town. Whatever the reason, if you’re going to be renting office space, make certain that you carefully evaluate it based on your needs and not your wants. If you don’t, you may find that you’re stuck paying a high monthly rent until your lease runs out. This could greatly deplete your budget and leave you facing bankruptcy or being forced to seek out a loan.
5. Be Careful With Credit
Depleting your budget leads into the next tip for success: be very careful with credit. Yes, it’s true that many businesses do have to take out a startup loan to get their business off the ground, but work as hard as possible to make sure that the loan isn’t more than you can afford and that you don’t continue to go farther and farther into debt. The last thing you want is to have several maxed out credit cards and a small business loan hanging over your head, especially if you haven’t established a strong customer base and are often in the red every month.
6. Remember that it’s Hard Work!
Finally, the last tip for success is to remember that starting and running a successful business is hard work, and if you’re not willing to put in more than a standard work week on a regular basis, at least at first, then you may find that your business is in trouble. You may not always need to work this hard, but until you can hire a staff and have a good number of customers darkening your door, you may have to wear a number of hats and work more than you expected. But keep at it—anyone with a truly good idea and the drive to own their own business can be successful, especially if you follow these tips and foolproof your business.
Is your Business Foolproof?
Do you have any tips for making a small business foolproof? If you do, we’d love to hear.
