Is your business on the right track? Do you have any idea where is it heading towards? How successful your strategies are? We live in a world of uncertainty and how can we cope best in this uncertainty age? Simply, by tracking progress and noticing changes even the subtle ones.
You might think that your business is just doing fine but in reality, the truth is something else. Just one wrong step could turn your business into a financial hole but that’s not what we will be discussing here.
According to a study, 8 out of 10 businesses fail within the first 18 months. A whopping 80 percent crash and burn. But we have to understand the reasons behind the failure and what we can apply to our own business ventures. The primary reason is that most of them don’t have a solid plan A and are clueless about the alternative plans; hence, they simply run out of cash. The cracks in the foundation start well before the actual day of the collapse.
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Before we start our journey, you have to ask yourself “what’s your business story?” Various aspects define your business and it’s imperative to know all of them. Overlook any of the aspects and the financial collapse starts. When focusing on your business objectives, people often forget to consider other parts of the organization that is in line with the business growth. For instance, when you don’t have enough manpower but say “yes” to every project or not having enough cash flow, skilled team of professionals, resources, infrastructure etc. can be detrimental to your growth.
When on a business venture, the last thing we focus on is the direction we have chosen and have no idea if the path chosen would guide us to our destination. But if address our failures upfront i.e. before it’s late, then we’ll be less likely to fall victim to the financial catastrophe.
Here’s another statistic to go through.
About half of the employer establishments survive at least five years and only 1/3rd survive ten years or more. What dampens the figure is that almost 65% of new businesses don’t even make it to the ten-year mark.
What are the reasons businesses fail to thrive and why there’s a bleak chance of their survival assuming that they are doing just fine? This is the very reason of downfall, keep assumptions that everything’s perfect, hence, increasing the odds of business failures.
There are few ways that can ensure that your business is in the right direction. So, let’s sink in.
Getting in touch with customers through deep dialogue.
Analyzing your relationship with customers can bring you a sea of opportunities. Get in touch with them more often and have the complete understanding of them to growing your business. Everything you do just think from your customer’s perspective as it is imperative to your success and then accomplish all your objectives.
Just remember that you have many doors of opportunities and customers are the key to unlocking the relevant one.
Know where you’re going :-
Every business starts with a bright idea but it takes more than an idea to giving it a shape. You might be having an idea now or maybe you had one before or you will have in future but there’s no point if that idea remains in your head only or on paper. You hope that your idea will go viral let you sell out in five years for megabucks (as in the case of WhatsApp). The point is that you should think years ahead of now and imagine where your business will be in the next five years and then start working on it. Moreover, this path is quite lucrative and has many alternatives but it’s up to you to sticking your plan.
Also, customer-oriented plays an important part, therefore, your strategies vary. For example, if you have an e-commerce store, then you will target a specific audience, if it’ an educational portal, then the audience is different. It’s similar to the genres of cinema people love. Different objectives require a different kind of strategy.
Know why you’re going :-
You might have observed that every time a new company becomes successful, then bigger fish in the market buys them. WhatsApp, Instagram, Nokia etc exemplify it. If your goal is to sell your company after years of profitable growth, then your approach should be different. In order get noticed you have to do something out of the box and your efforts should be unique. Similarly, if your aim is to opposite to that, then you’ll need to demonstrate potential even if you never make a profit.
Plan your course :-
Once you get in the flow, you have to maintain that momentum and get going towards achieving your goals. You should always analyze every step before implementing it being aware of its pros and cons. Analyzing your strength and opportunities along with that of your competitors and the niche market. The result of your efforts will be a list of objectives to help you reach your goals.
Even when going through the rough phase, your objective should be to maximizing profits and to track your progress in order to achieve the goals you have set.
The bottom line is that strategic planning will assist you in choosing the right direction. Whether in good times or bad times, the strategies you implement determine the progress of your plan. Take some time off and try to understand what your objectives are and which course of action best suits you.
