Are you wondering why your company, despite your efforts, does not seem to take off as you expect it to do? If so, you may unknowingly be committing these common but preventable mistakes in running your business:
• You have been inconsistent with your operations. Every business has routine functions that must be attended to regularly. It could be as basic as close observance of office discipline or as technical as regular maintenance of equipment or operating procedures. For example, sporadic or selective implementation of office rules and regulations confuses workers and reflects the company’s lack of proper control and authority. This could be perceived as a weakness and lack of fairness on the part of management. This weakens your workers’ morale. You could not expect a demoralized workforce to function efficiently or effectively.
• You fail to appreciate simple but effective techniques in managing your business. You may have attended too many marketing seminars that extol the virtues of sophisticated techniques in growing your business. There is nothing wrong in keeping abreast with modern trends in business management but you should not forget the time-tested and reliable methods used by giant companies when they first started their business– personal touch with their customers. For example, there are countless software and technologies nowadays that make direct human interactions obsolete. There are now auto-responders that churn out generic and impersonal messages to human clients. They may be great in saving time and effort but they lack the personal touch and warmth of personally written notes. These have greater impact on customers in earning their trust and loyalty to your company. We are not against modernization but it should help, not hamper, business. Investing on virtual workers to attend to this function of keeping close and regular personal contacts with clients is one way of being time and cost efficient in running your business.
• You lack presence in the marketplace online. Do not underestimate the impact of online media in making your company name and/or product a household name. Although TV and printed ads are powerful tools in “brainwashing” the market with your brand, you must augment their impact with online presence, too. Study shows that as of the year 2012, about 34.4% of the world’s population had access to internet. That figure keeps on growing exponentially with an average annual population growth of 47%. Imagine the potentially huge market you could capture by making the internet a vehicle for spreading your presence online. A creation of a professionally designed website could do this for you.
• You fail to listen. Make sure you keep your ears close to the ground. Listen to what your clients are saying. Hear out their complaints and comments as often as possible, daily if possible, and act on them promptly. Take advantage of your size to provide personalized attention to your customers. Larger corporations have either grown too big or too complacent to attend to this aspect of marketing to their eventual loss. Hire virtual assistants to attend to this important task. This is a sure way to gain the loyalty and continuous patronage of clients for years to come.
Now, examine the way you run your business. Attending to these simple yet often ignored mistakes could make a considerable push for your business to take off!