How To Avoid The Costly Mistakes That Cripple Small Business

Whether you have been in business for years or are just starting out, you need to recognize these costly errors before you can learn how to avoid them.

These are the deadly traps that too many small business owners fall into:

1. Getting wedded to an idea and sticking with it for too long - Don't stay married for life to a single idea. Ideas are the currency of entrepreneurs. Play around with as many ideas as you like to discover which ones create money and lasting success.

2. Operating without a viable marketing plan - A winning marketing plan captures the attention you need to surround your enterprise with the right calibre of people; employees, customers, suppliers. There may be a 100 disparate ways to market your business but an exclusive viable plan implemented effectively, efficiently, and consistently will be results driven, eliminating guesswork.

3. Failing to appreciate market forces - Changes in customer preferences and advances in competitive products and services can leave you stranded in the dust unless you take the trouble to get to know your market and your customers well. It is essential that you appreciate what customers want now, what they're likely to want in the future, how their buying patterns are evolving, and how you can become a constant resource for them even if you don't have the right products and services for them right now.

4. Ignoring your cash position - Customers do not always respond to superior products in the time frame that you think they should. You'll need plenty of cash to sustain operations in the interim. Cash is king, so be on your guard as to how it flows in - and out.

5. Ignoring employees - The management and motivation of staff is one of the biggest challenges facing the business owner. Without patience, persistence and people skills, problems quickly multiply - and morale, productivity and profits can easily be destroyed. Always make your people your first priority.

6. Confusing likelihood with reality - The successful entrepreneur lives in the world of likelihood but spends money in the real world. Be realistic in all of your commercial undertakings.

7. Operating without a sales strategy - Without a strategy for selling, there is no effective way to gauge the financial growth and progress of a business. You need a realistic map that identifies where the sales will come from, how they will come - and from whom.

8. Playing the Lone Ranger with no back up - You are the key to it all but you cannot do everything yourself and continue to grow at the same time. Even modest success can overwhelm you unless you hire the right staff and delegate responsibility.

9. Operating with no mastermind on board - Most small businesses expand faster when there is someone around with a few grey hairs to cast an experienced eye occasionally on overall activity. Your elder statesperson could operate for you as an executive director or part-time consultant.

10. Giving up - Not every successful entrepreneur gets it right first time; some fail several times before they strike the core formula that does it for them. So, if you are failing, go ahead and fail. But fail fast and learn from the experience. Then try again with this new wisdom. Never give up and never suffer either.

Knowledge is the key

The birds of the air have the knowledge (and the wings) to get from one destination to another on time, every time. They have no need of travel schedules, passports, currency exchange, traveller checks, or any other restrictive man-made paraphernalia to staunch their progress. Flocks of swifts, for example, are so confident of their navigational prowess they catnap on the wing on journeys spanning thousands of miles.

They have an instinctive fail-safe route plan.

So too will you when you learn how to avoid the ten most deadly mistakes in minding your own business.

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