Often, I’ll have new coaching clients come to me because their business isn’t growing as much as they would like. Below are some of the top mistakes I’ve been small business owners make when attempting to grow their business.
Top Reasons Your Business Isn’t Growing
1. Doing Everything Yourself
No small business owners start their business just because they’re great at running small businesses. (Ok, except me, because that’s literally what I’ve done my entire career before we started Radar Designs.) They get into it because they have an idea, a passion or a skill. However, you quickly get pulled in multiple directions suddenly trying to understand marketing trends, build a website, develop lead conversion, hire, understand P&Ls, etc. You do everything necessary to run a business, but stop doing the actual business. It’s important to audit and see what can be leveraged out so that your time can be spent doing the things you’re good at!
2. Not Listening to Feedback
You can’t please everybody. Some business owners take this to heart and disregard any unsatisfied customer’s feedback. However, even if you’ve lost a customer who you consider a total jerk, it’s still a learning opportunity. I recommend to our clients that they spend time every quarter looking at business they lost and why they lost it to understand what they could have controlled to improve the experience. (Pro tip. 95% of the time, it’s a communication issue.)
3. Attempting to Grow Too Quickly
Slow, steady growth is is the best path for long term success. This can be frustrating to business owners who are sold a million ‘magic’ ways to get millions more in sales. You start making short term decisions that aren’t sustainable for long term growth. Investing in unproven marketing strategies, hiring before you’re ready, and not constructing a long term plan for sustainable growth are all issues I’ve seen our coaching clients have. There’s a reason that old ‘Tortoise & The Hare’ story exists, slow and steady wins the race.
4. Not Knowing Your Client
I always ask new clients who their ideal customer is. 99% of the time, I’m met with silence. If you don’t know who your customer is, then you can’t market to them, create customer processes to retain them or create a brand that draws them in. You must understand your customer in order to win their business and to provide them the highest level of service.
Running a small business is hard, growing one is even more difficult. You can make the experience easier by not making these common mistakes.
If you’d like to set up an in-depth conversation about your business, reach out to us today!
