How To Improve Business Performance

I just thought of sharing a few tips on How To Improve Business Performance.

1. Proper selection of workers.
2. Proper training.
3. Motivation.
4. Work Specialization.
5. Use tools or equipments that assist or supports performance.
6. Provide quick and easy access to help.
7. Allow workers to help redesign their tasks.

These are direct tips drawn out from my experience. I also have worked for a certain company and these are actually what I needed to improve my personal performance for the company I’ve been working for. So I’d thought this would also help small business owners as well.

Learning from Small Business Mistakes

The life cycle of the typical small business is short and painful. It starts out with a dream and ends with a whimper. And in between, a struggle of Herculean proportions is played out as the owner tries to figure out why the business isn’t succeeding.

Just for as to remember: “When you examine the reasons that cause business failures, you begin to understand that most business failures are preventable.”

Let me begin with my first hand experience – my own experience. My business failed few years back then because of the missing ingredient which is – knowledge. I jumped out with excitement and invested to a business when I did not even have enough knowledge about it. Trusting that all these will be solved along the way. But I was wrong because there’s no such thing as that. Business is crucial and we have to have sufficient research made before doing business. But this is not the only reason why small business fails.

According to a study published by Jessie Hagen of U.S. Bank gives the details of the top reasons for failure:

General Business Factors

• 78% – Lack of a well-developed business plan, including insufficient research on the business before starting it.

• 73% Being overly optimistic about achievable sales, money required and about what needs to be done to be successful.

• 70% Not recognizing, or ignoring, what they don’t do well and not seeking help from those who do.

• 63% Insufficient relevant and applicable business experience.

Financial Factors

• 82% Poor cash flow management skills/poor understanding of cash flow

• 79% Starting out with too little money.

• 77% Not pricing properly – failure to include all necessary items when setting prices

Marketing Factors

• 64% Minimizing the importance of promoting the business properly.

• 55% Not understanding who your competition is or ignoring competition.

• 47% Too much focus and reliance on one customer/client.

Human Resource Factors

• 58% Inability to delegate properly – micro-managing work given to others or over delegating and abdicating important management responsibilities.

• 56% Hiring the wrong people – clones of themselves and not people with complimentary skills, or hiring friends and relatives.

Now, it’s time to assess your business to see if any of these Failure Flags exist. Then, systematically eliminate them. And if you don’t have all the skills you need, hire an expert to help you. The cost of having a professional on your team is far less than watching your business join the failure club. What do you think?

Winning Over Negative Brand Commentors

Just a few days ago that Amanda wrote about how to react on negative nellies.hem?

Dealing with negative people seems like a daily occurence lately.  Nobody seems to ever be pleased.  You know the kind.  No matter what you do or say, you can’t seem to make these people happy or even semi-happy.  For business owners, we deal with negative nellies often.

Very true. If I suddenly meet these kind of people, I usually step back a little and grab a few minutes to relax. Of course, it’s very inevitable that we can be affected to what they have said about you and/or your business. I don’t want to impulsively react to that situation. When I already have relaxed, that is when I respond.

Now, how about you? How do you react? What tip can you give to avoid digging deep the hole to your business’ failure?

How To Take Care Customers’ Loyalty

For almost a week ago, Susan has written about tips on taking care customers’ loyalty where she invited a couple of really well known and successful small business owners sharing their experiences and insights.

Retaining customer’s loyalty is as important as targeting new customers and I bet it’s more difficult than the latter. Honestly, all tips from the experts interviewed by Susan are all great and I really want to thank Susan for taking this initiative to interview them.

I also just wanted to share to my readers about retaining customer’s loyalty to your business. In my humble experience, I can summarize it to 2 very important ways.  First, is to listen to what they need. Second is to respond positively to their queries.

Put yourself as the customer. Is there anything more painful to you when the business you trusted with does not listen and does nothing for your concerns?

We all became customers on different ways so I am very pretty sure it’s not hard for you to relate the same sentiments as I have. But this usually happens and I even did experience it earlier today from my internet service provider.

I think the bottomline here is — treat your customers as how you have wanted to be treated too as a customer. Then if we bear this in mind, retaining their loyalty won’t be that too hard also.