Is Your Business Losing Money Because Of Unthinking Or Change?

As an executive coach I find it fascinating that people don’t do the things that will make their business stronger, grow more profits and ultimately help them retire with a nice nest egg.

People who’ve had the gumption to grow their business to the current level and then basically maintain it at that level. That means their thought processes tend to be fixated on making sure they get at least the same as last year.

And of course as we all know fixing your eyes on getting at least that amount means you get that amount, or less.

The other problem is in always doing what you’ve always done. There’s two issues with this approach.

Things Change

It’s no surprise, things do change. As we go along in business newer ways of doing things, better ways of doing things and newer and better products come along. If you don’t pick them up and at least try them this is what happens:

Step 1: You lose all your customers who want to try the new product

Step 2: After a while other customers see your previous customers doing well with the new product and go and buy one themselves

Step 3: The product you sell is seen as outdated and its price drops and your remaining customers try and beat you down further as your product is no longer seen as fashionable/superior/up-to date

Step 4: To try and improve your income you try and get the new products in, you don’t have enough time to evaluate them so you may not pick the best. Your remaining customers leave you as you no longer fully support the old product you sold, yet you don’t sell the best new product that attracts the premium

Step 5: You close the doors forever

Not Thinking The Long Game

Often business is so wrapped up in the operational detail of doing business they don’t take the time to stand back and see where they should be going.  And I’ve been used to help business get that focus and clarity of where they want to get to.

Because scurrying around like a mad thing trying to do business is no use at all if:

• you’re not making sufficient profits during the customer life time – you can’t invest in your company and staff
• you’re selling the wrong things for your market – you have to work harder than you should
• Your staff don’t know where the business is headed – if they’ve different views their priorities will differ too
• Never fully resolve internal conflicts of process, people or policy – wastes time and money

And if you don’t know this sort of thing is happening, because you’re too close to the wood to see the trees, you are destined to repeatedly lose money, or leave money on the table, or lose good staff.

So take a step back, realise that your business can be improved in many ways to make you more profits and improve your staff too.