Why Businesses Fail

The success of any business starts with its survival! Even though 68% of Australian small businesses operating today won't be around ten years from now (ABS 2003), almost all business owners believe that they are not at risk.

In order to cope with poor sales growth and rising costs, most owners work longer hours, lower their prices and down size to ensure the doors remain open. In fact, many small business owners work longer hours for less pay than their staff.

These are reasons that most small businesses fail:

• Inadequate Marketing and Business Systems
  • Poor business systems result in higher costs and lost time. Inadequate Marketing Systems produce poor customer service, and an inability to get new customers and to keep them coming back. A combination of high costs and lack of customers will cause businesses to fail.
  
  
  
• Problems with staff due to a lack of People Systems

  • Staff problems start with poor selection, no real job description, inadequate training, no structured performance review and rewards unlinked to performance. Without good people systems, your best staff will leave, and your other staff will stay, remain unmotivated, and ultimately be a participant in the demise of your business.

• Acting tactically without Marketing and Business Strategies or Plans
  • In order to grow your business, or even just to maintain your current position, it is essential to have marketing and business strategies that identify and maximise all opportunities and address threats to your business. Without these strategies being continually updated, market share can be lost while your products and services decline in value in a changing marketplace.

And the final reason that businesses fail is that while they recognise these issues, most business owners prefer to talk about their problems rather than act to fix them.

What will make Your Business a Success?

Some believe all you need is a great idea. But, unless you can patent your idea, it will be copied within 12 months. The only way to guarantee long term success is by:

• planning with effective business systems,
• developing strategies to market your product
• and implementing systems to keep customers coming back.

When you look at all successful business owners, they have two things in common. They have all accepted help along the way, and they have been prepared to act to address the problems in their business.

Find out further information on what will make your businesses a success when you request a Free Preview copy of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

So, why is it the case that so few businesses seek assistance, until it's too late?

• Firstly, they don't believe anyone can understand their business as well as they do, and see getting help as an admission of failure. Many say- "I can do this myself!?" But almost no-one does it themselves. A survey we did several years ago showed that 96% of business owners who said this, still had done nothing six months later and if anything were in a worse position than previously. If you change nothing- nothing changes!



• Secondly they see obtaining assistance as a cost rather than an investment in their business. There is a common belief that consultants are expensive. Well they are if you leave it too late! But in most businesses, there are hidden areas of profit just waiting to be uncovered. When this profit is released into your business, its value can be tens of times the cost of a good consultant. How often do you get the opportunity to put money into an investment with a 1000% return?



• And thirdly, they may have had a bad experience previously when they have sought assistance. They are skeptical that anyone knows as much about their business as they do. So what you need is .... the 'Right Kind of Help'

To find out if your business is at risk, and how you can rescue it, book your complementary business evaluation today, and turn your around business now!

The Definition of Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting something different to happen!