Starting a business is a leap of faith even in the best of circumstances. At the beginning, you’re so pumped and eager to get things done. Ready to be the next big thing. Ready to acquire the lucrative title of “an entrepreneur”. Ready to create employment and so forth.
So you invest in a good website, pay for business registration, identify a good location and launch. But what then happens? The sales you were waiting for don’t come in as fast as you expected. Your bank account reduces instead of growing contrary to what you had dreamed about.
Suddenly, you realize that your business idea is more fizzle than sizzle. What do you do?
1.Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to succeed
Chances are that you’re putting too much pressure on yourself – pressure not to make mistakes, pressure to be financially stable, pressure to make your mother proud and pressure to succeed. Do whatever you can to step out from the crushing weight of all the pressure you feel.
Focus on re-building your self confidence by setting small achievable goals for yourself…and when you reach them, acknowledge and give yourself a pat in the back. Focus on the journey and build on your small successes with each passing day. Remember; Rome was not built in a day.
2.Don’t lose patience, some businesses require more time to establish
Patience is key. Im: Maegen Lentz
Most businesses tend to stagnate during the first 12 months of starting. Unless you’re very lucky, things don’t always take off immediately. The market needs time to familiarize with your business before they embrace it.
Instead of giving up and complaining how bad the market conditions are, you should focus on fine-tuning your strategy. Do less of what doesn’t work and more of what works well for your business.
3.Don’t bury your head in the sand, face the problem
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. In fact, in most cases we tend to give up when we’re just a few meters away from discovering the gold-mine. Rather than losing focus, the ideal thing to do is to focus more time and attention to your business.
Try to identify the cause of your failure and deal with it. Could it be that you hired the wrong employees? Or could it be that your pricing strategy is unrealistic? This is the time to identify what is chocking your business and stump it out.
4.Don’t get caught up marketing to the wrong people
Are you selling to the wrong market? Some markets are easy to penetrate but they don’t have adequate purchasing power to support your business. Case in point is the Kenyan Facebook arena which is mainly made up of college and high school students who don’t have much purchasing power.
Other types of markets are quite difficult to penetrate but they have a lot of spending power. Case in point being middle-class working community. That being the case, you need to target the right market properly being sure to bring the right kinds of customers aboard in the process.
Sometimes, this might take longer than expected but patience is key.
5.Don’t always assume the quality of your goods and services is OK
Im :DT Customer’s buying quality apples.
Yes, you know how to adhere to the strictness quality standards in the market. However, there’s always room for improvement. It could be that your target customers are yet to appreciate the quality you’re offering this far and so you need to keep improving to hack your way into their hearts.
Is there a problem with quality of your packaging? How about your delivery, do you deliver on time? How about your ability to keep old customers, do they keep coming back with their friends? If NO, then it’s high time you watch the quality of your goods or services.
6.Don’t micromanage/ blame other people
There is a bit of ego that comes with starting a business. We, the owners, think that we know everything better than everyone else. In the event of failure, we often rush to blame everyone else apart from ourselves.
Unfortunately, the more we operate with this notion, the more harm we do to ourselves. Little do we know that the role of running a successful company lies with each and every member of the team.
This may not be the time to fire everyone from your small company. Perhaps this is the right time to tap deeper into the potential of each individual employee or team member for the greater good of your business.
Finally;
There are many other reasons why your business may fail to take off in good time as expected. However, if you are patient enough and willing to invest just a little more effort then you can see the change you’ve always yearned for.
Kindly, share with us your thoughts about this story, including your personal opinion on the same, via the comment box.
