If you are a small business owner, it is very easy to lose focus of your primary vision, mission and objective, and invest your precious time in worthless ideas. As an entrepreneur, executive, or leader, focusing on small business growth opportunities can be quite challenging when you're dealing with imminent crises that distract you away from strategic business planning.
It is crucial therefore that you spend quality time to develop business strategies for navigating your company, setting clear goals and objectives, and achieving your desired results.
In 2011, a blueprint of the biggest problems small businesses are facing was released by the Institute of Directors. The report clearly identified the key problems challenging small business growth and how they are impacting their survival. The purpose of this article is to help you understand how to turn those problems around to grow your business and increase profitability.
1. Lack of clearly defined plan
Did you know that many small business owners run their businesses without a business plan? Obviously, there is not business that operates without a plan that grows.
If you want your business to grow faster, make sure you invest quality time regularly in business planning activities. If you already have one, it is important also to revise it and update with current trends.
2. Ineffective leadership
Many times you discover that almost 85% of small business owners and executives are saddled with the responsibilities for almost everything in their business. You constantly find yourself in the habit of switching from your primary leadership functions to managing thereby losing the concentration you need to grow your business.
Every time you lose focus of your primary leadership roles and responsibilities, you invariably position your business to fail. You must always focus on your core priority functions to maintain your effectiveness.
3. Lack of execution
Lack of execution is probably the major problem business owners face.
Did you know that leaders and executives spend less than one hour a month to develop business strategies? Worse still, they do not execute the strategies they developed and their employees are never aware of them either.
It doesn't matter how realistic your business strategies look on paper, if you are not committed to take enough action to implement them, the business will suffer. Make sure to break your strategies down into small actionable steps you can achieve daily. Begin with the smallest part first.
4. Marketing and sales effectiveness
No matter what your business is established for, if you are not making enough sales to cover your cost and make profit; your business will probably not grow. Marketing and sales are the key elements of business survival and should be properly planned.
Planning your marketing and sales entails that you must understand the values your products or services are meant to deliver to your customer and develop business strategies to actually create them. You see, you must learn to approach your prospect from the point of view of providing solution to their problems. Succeeding at this means that you must list the cures, values and benefits your products/services offer your target market.
