Anti-Blunder Guide: 5 Blunders Your Business Should Never Be Doing, Ever

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Anti-Blunder Guide: 5 Blunders Your Business Should Never Be Doing, Ever

Running a business should have been easy, if it weren’t for all those blunders that we all invariably do. It could be lack of information or plain laziness. Either way, we kill our chances of making it big in business thanks to some avoidable mistakes. Here are at least five such blunders that affect us:

Doing business for yourself and not your customers

It’s understandable that you’d have started your enterprise so that you can benefit from the fact that your small business is entirely your creation. You not only earn from it but you also plug into the possibility of creating a legacy while plucking out special benefits such as freedom and immense self-satisfaction.

Yet, unless your business is outward and created for customers from the start, your business can barely sustain the vagaries of industry and entrepreneurship. The only way businesses make money is to solve problems or create products (that solve some pertinent problems) for customers. It’s a simple equation; but it forms the core of all capitalism.

Pricing Low and looking to sell volumes

Starting from individual, one-person businesses going all the way up to companies worth millions of dollars, this one strategic blunder bleeds profits to the point of bankruptcy. Most businesses tend to compete on price thinking that by pricing low, you attract a lot of customers. You certainly would, except that you’d attract the wrong kind of customers, you’d have to sell many times over to make enough sales to be in profit, and you really have nothing much going for you.

Pricing low is the wrong route to profits. The right way is to price slightly above the highest price point on an average (with respect to your competition) and slap layers of value on top of your actual offering.

Going soft on competition & Giving up on the race

It’s a good thing if you see that there are other businesses for you to compete with. If you are doing all you can to stay light years ahead of your competition, you are doing well indeed. If you are just getting by, trying to grab as many profits as you can from what’s available to you, or if you are letting your competition snatch the ground off from under your feet, you are likely to be in trouble. Don’t give up on the race. Think of ways to beat your competition to pulp. It’s all an interesting game to see the dynamics of business competition. Play it hard and long.

Not marketing long and hard enough

I am a die-hard advocate of marketing continuously, for the long-term. First, by marketing I mean everything from product planning, packaging, and launch all the way up to the point to long-term sales until the next cycle of a new launch follows, and then marketing continues with that. Some businesses are guilty of marketing in spurts, doing it when sales seem to be low, intensifying marketing activities during holiday season and letting go for the rest of the time.

If you have to do marketing for your business, you do it every single day. No excuses.

Gaping void in recruiting and training

From your 1st hire to the 50,000th hire in another country, accountability for every recruit you bring into your business becomes mandatory. Accountability and other things such as value from every team member or employee come only from proper training and recruiting practices. Of course, this point alone is an entire year’s worth of content while studying for business. The point is that the secret behind successful companies is a bevy of teams that are compassionate, hard-working, talented, and dedicated to the common cause: branding and profitability.

Even if you are a small business today, this approach to recruiting helps in the long run – no matter how big or small you choose to be.

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