You should learn from your mistakes,
and you should learn from other people’s mistakes too. Before you, so many
other people ventured out in different industries in an attempt to establish
their own business. Some succeeded, some failed, but at one point or another,
they all made mistakes.
Over here, we are going to present
you the best lessons that you can learn from mistakes which other business
owners made.
1. Your website should serve the needs
of your customers
Let us give you an example of the owner
of a software company. The owner was smart and while developing their tools, they
tested them out and interviewed potential customers. All of their applications
were passed through an alphas test, then a private test and last of all the
public beta test. The company had a worked
with over 250 potential customers, belonging to different industries.
The plan seemed so good, but the
target conversion rate was still not achieved. What went wrong and where? For starters,
the company had been in the industry for not even a year so they did not have
the trust of their customers. Secondly, their website was not well designed and
did no t provide the target audience much information about their processes.
What do you learn from this? Your
products must serve the needs of your target audience, but you should also make
things easy for them at every step, starting with the website. Make sure you
have a website that clearly explains everything, has a friendly user interface
and easy navigation.
One more thing to keep in mind: Put your
contact details in places where they can be easily seen.
2. Take help from others and delegate tasks
As passionate, motivated and
determined you may be, fact is you cannot run a business by yourself. You need others
to help you out at one point or another.
Whenever you should have a problem, take help from the experts. If you
yourself are not good at something, hire a team which can do the job easily. Be
a good leader and learn to delegate tasks to those who have the capabilities of
conducting them. In addition, most of all, trust your team, give them
responsibilities. As long as you hired the right candidates, they will not fail
to give you the performance you desire from them.
3. Educate yourself and your team
No one has complete knowledge about everything.
What is that you are not good at? Start learning more about it. So for instance,
if you are not great at an accounting software, you could get some training on
it. If there is some other job that you
do not do so well, you could learn more about it.
Read reputed blogs on the internet, watch
videos, take classes and keep up with the latest happenings in your industry. And
encourage your team to do the same, all along providing them with training and
the support that they need.
4. Take support from other small businesses
Do you consider other small
businesses to be your competitors? Many entrepreneurs do, but from now onwards,
you should start seeing them from a different perspective. Rather than competing
with them, collaborate with the. What advantage will this bring you? Cost
reduction, efficient resource utilization and so many other benefits.
When you work with other small businesses,
you can bring down your operational costs. As an example, if you and they buy
the inventory in bulk, you can get bigger discounts. Similarly, the two of you
can launch a promotional event together and divide the costs that incur.
5. When hiring, one interview is far from
enough
Another lesson learnt by the CEO of
a software company. When you are hiring new employees, you should be really
careful. One quick look at the resume and a basic interview are often not
enough. Instead, you should get to know the candidates better through two or
even three interviews as you may deem necessary. The interviews should be rigorous
and based on challenging questions. And do not forget to run a background check
and talk to the references.
6. Excite your target audience
We actually learn this lesson from
Apple, which always excites their customers in some way or another. With their enticing
videos, teaser campaigns and luring TV commercials, Apple creates a buzz of
their products before launching them.
While you may not be able to do it
at the same level as Apple, you can still implement some of their strategies
and create a buzz about your new products and services through social media,
email marketing campaigns and other cost-effective strategies.
7. Don’t grow too attached to your
business
We know a CEO who has built and then
sold four big technical companies. The lesson which he learnt from his
experience was that no business owner should get too attached to their
business. In the bluntest of words, the primary goal of your company is to make
money, but will this money buy you any love? There will always come a time when
you will not need your business, but someone else by your side to share all the
ups and downs with.
So quit loving your company. After
all, you never know what the future holds, and there may be a time when you
will be dissolving, closing or selling your business to someone else.
8. Always remember your primary purpose
Why did you set up your company?
What inspired you to establish your own business? Keep in touch with your
initial passion and motivation at every part of the journey. As you operate
your business, your finances, mistakes and failures might weigh you down and
you may start having second thoughts. In times like these, you should reconnect
with your initial passion, and become even more determined to take your company
to greater heights.
So learn the above lessons by heart
and keep them in mind as you continue to strive to establish and grow your
business.
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