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Five Ways to Kill Any Business
There are numerous lists of
‘ways to succeed in business’ and many of them contain some words of
valuable advice for every business owner. This article takes a different
view – that of wanting to be sure a business turns up its heels and dies
in the shortest possible time.
Based on real-life experiences, this list offers the successful business
proprietor a way out of going into the office every day – the door will
be shut. No more worries about managing a business or looking after your
team. No more dealing with customers or suppliers. They’ll all be gone,
and just because you followed these proven principles to failure.
1. Believe Your Customers Will
Stay Loyal
“Once a customer, always a customer” is a thing of the past. New
customers have to be acquired all the time, and their loyalty has to be
constantly recreated or else they’ll be lured away by your more
aggressive competitors. Unless you know your customers well and
understand precisely what it is they want, how can you hope to deliver
it to them?
The global rise in the use of CRM systems indicates the importance that
must be placed on maintaining relationships with customers. They have to
have an enjoyable experience every time they buy from you or they’ll go
somewhere else to get it.
2. Don’t Motivate Your Employees
A business is more than just premises and equipment. The human capital
of your enterprise is essential to your success, and the more you invest
in your people the greater the return you’ll get.
Motivate your people with rewards that are commensurate to their
efforts. Give them the training they need to do their jobs well, and
communicate with them so they feel like they know what’s going on in the
business. Even better – form your people into a team that shares the
goals of your business and works together to achieve them.
People want to work for more than just money. If all you’re giving them
is a job and pay they won’t find it hard to either look for more money
elsewhere or a workplace that’s really enjoyable and develops their
abilities. Your best people will be the first ones you lose and the most
expensive to replace.
3. Don’t Have a Marketing Plan
A marketing plan is a kind of road map that you create to chart the path
of your business. It has destinations and milestones that let you know
how close you are to getting where you want to go. More important, a
business plan contains the strategies you employ to drive the business
ahead.
Every business needs to be working to a well thought-out marketing plan.
It starts with a description of where the business is now, who its
customers are, where you want the business to be by the end of the year
and how it will get there. It also contains a financial model of
projected income and costs.
Many businesses don’t have a written marketing plan – it’s ‘all in
somebody’s head’ or simply doesn’t exist at all. That’s a characteristic
of most businesses that fail – their marketing plan is either
nonexistent or so unrealistic that it should never have been used as the
basis for anything the business did.
It’s an old saying, but always worth repeating: “Those who fail to plan
are planning to fail”.
4. Ignore the Competition
A sure-fire way to kill a business is to ignore your competitors. No
business trades in isolation. Unless it actively works to learn about
other businesses in the same industry and studies those with which it’s
competing for customers it can miss where the market is going and find
itself too far behind to catch up.
Products can change and make your offerings obsolete. New marketing
practices can be used to approach your customers and convince them to go
elsewhere. Industry trends can change and the first businesses that
respond to those changes can quickly increase their share-of-market at
the expense of those who lag behind.
But since we’re telling you how to fail, don’t worry about your
competitors’ range of products or services; you’ve got your own. Don’t
be concerned about their marketing techniques or the way they maintain
their premises.
Most importantly, don’t worry about trends in your industry,
particularly those your competitors seem to be picking up and running
with. Just keep right on doing what you’ve always done and the world
will beat a path to your door.
5. Forget About Taxes
Not planning for taxation liabilities is one of the key reasons small
businesses go under – shut down by the taxman for non-payment of moneys
owned the government. And nobody has a longer memory (or more money to
spend on collections) than the government.
Taxation must be factored into the cash position of your business. Money
needs to be set aside every week for every tax impost that applies to
your organization, whether you like it or not. In some jurisdictions
simply failing to do this can be seen as a form of tax avoidance.
Then again, maybe if you just forget about taxes they’ll go away. Just
spend the cash you get and imagine that if you don’t file a tax return
you won’t have to pay any taxes. And of course if you don’t have to pay
any taxes you also won’t have to pay any fines for non-payment of taxes
– fines that can double or treble your liability.
These five ways to kill any business are guaranteed to work. Your
customers, employees, marketing plan, competitors and taxation
liabilities are integral elements of your business and need to be given
the attention they deserve. Ignore them and you won’t have to worry
about them for very long because they’ll be gone – all except those
taxation liabilities that have a way of lingering forever.
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