May 26, 2011
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Affordably Build Your Brand
FedEx Global Brand Management Director Monica Skipper shares a cost-effective way to build a bigger brand for your small business.
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Twenty-seven ways you can mess up in small business means 27 ways you can learn something and do better the next time. You don't build success on success alone. You build success on one failure after another—if you learn from those failures and move forward. What can you learn from these real-life business mistakes? Here are the second group of nine.
10. Mistaking a business relationship for a personal relationship
Since small business owners invest so much personally into their businesses, from home office space to personal finances, it's easy for them to invest emotionally in business relationships in the same way they might invest in personal relationships. While business relationships are often as beneficial and long-term as some personal relationships, you can't assume the same level of personal commitment that you would from a family member or close friend.
Lesson Learned: Business relationships can turn into valued personal relationships, but don't mistake one for the other. Invest in your business relationship, but don't depend on them, and don't approach them with the assumption that you share mutual values and goals.
11. Not hiring help soon enough
Moving from one-man shop to small business with employees is a difficult transition. Hana Johnson, owner of Hair Flairs LLC, notes that, "once you are overwhelmed, overworked, and stretched too thin, then the hiring process becomes burdensome and becomes a chore in itself." Johnson's own experience shows that every new hire leads to new business growth, as she can move from doing the daily, detail work of business to focus on marketing and bringing in new customers.
Lesson Learned: Your ability does not equal your responsibility. Sure, you can do every little thing involved in running your business, but you should be doing the work of the owner, not the work of the $10-an-hour employee. Delegating is the best way to help your business grow.
12. Delegating too late
Waiting until you're overwhelmed, as Johnson mentioned, to get new help or delegate additional work to current employees, means that the process of delegation will be tougher on everyone involved. You'll be stressed out and feeling like you have no time to adequately train your employee, and your employee will feel unnecessary pressure to do a new job without adequate training, time or help.
Lesson Learned: Develop a plan to delegate from the earliest days of your business, and start training your employee(s) before you hit a crisis point. You can always stay involved in certain tasks or projects as you are able, but the sooner you delegate what you can, the sooner you can focus on your most important work.
13. Not paying attention to your branding
Sometimes good enough is good enough. Sometimes good enough is bad. Melissa Turner, excited to be able to start marketing her company, Mainstream Services Inc., ordered hundreds of dollars of promotional items without first checking their quality and brand consistency. She ended up with a collection of not-nearly-good-enough items: mismatched colors, missing slogans and unreadable business cards.
Lesson Learned: "What I leave behind with networking associates and potential clients can wipe out any positive, professional first impression I may think I made," says Turner. "Taking the time upfront to check and double-check everything that will present my name, image, logo and slogan is priceless in the end."
14. Assuming that a professional image doesn't matter
When you're working with minimal funds, it's easy to decide that a professional image is an option. You wait on branding, a logo, custom graphic design, a decent website, right? You've got a good product. People will recognize that...won't they? Not necessarily. The Internet, with all its multimedia options, has made us more image-conscious as consumers, not less.
Lesson Learned: Though it's easy enough to throw together a halfway-decent website, some sort of content, and a collection of semi-related marketing materials, a thrown-together look results in the perception that you are an amateur, and your business itself is thrown together.
15. Using an unnecessary professional service
A professional image matters, but that doesn't mean that do-it-yourself isn't a valid approach. Depending on your skills, contacts, and past experience, you may be just as capable of professional results as the services you could hire. Joshua Weaver, of PriceFalls.com, found that the huge investment his company made in hiring a professional public relations firm was unnecessary. After several months of disappointing results, Weaver and company took their marketing and PR in-house, and were able to save money and make their outreach more targeted, personal, and consistent with the company mission.
Lesson Learned: Getting a professional job done does not necessarily mean hiring a professional service to do it. Don't be afraid to look into all your options. Define the results you want, then decide if the best way to get them is by outsourcing, hiring, or doing it yourself, or some combination.
16. Not doing your research first
When it comes to areas in which small business owners feel inadequate, they are tempted to simply go with the first option available and hope it all works out. The results can be fine; sometimes in a hit-or-miss situation, you get the hit. But you can miss, too, and it can cost you in terms of time, money and reputation.
Lesson Learned: If you feel too busy to do the research into your best options—whether for public relations, a new manufacturer, a supplier relationship, product packaging or hiring—then delegate the work of research to someone else in your business.
17. Failing to look into the future
Not that you need a crystal ball, but you do need to anticipate customer turnover and continuing profit growth. Ian Aronovich, cofounder of GovernmentAuctions.org, says that his initial revenue model of an annual membership fee failed to consider what would happen when the year was up. Though Aronovich had good success in gaining first-year customers, turnover was high when the time came for customers to renew.
Lesson Learned: "At that time, we were only thinking in the 'now,'" says Aronovich. "We failed to think about how we would attend to customers after the 365 days was up." Focusing on current profit is important, but it must be coupled with a clear plan for future profit as well.
18. Not making it easy on the customers
Aronovich learned a simple truth that all small business owners must understand: people are lazy. Because customers had to re-enter all their financial information in order to renew their annual membership, many of them simply let the membership expire rather than go through the "work" of renewing it. When Aronovich switched to a revenue model of recurring monthly payments, the company was able to retain current customers as well as gain new ones.
Lesson Learned: Don't make your customers work in order to buy your service or product. It's your job to do the work. Make purchasing, renewing, updating and upgrading as simple and easy as you possibly can. Don't try to make people less lazy; make the purchase less difficult.
Annie Mueller is a freelance writer based in St. Louis. She covers small business topics with a focus on lean/zero budget start-ups, business blogging, and simple (sane) ways business can use social media without selling their souls to Facebook. Her work can be seen online at Investopedia's Financial Edge blog, Young Entrepreneur, Wise Bread, Organic Authority, Modern Mom, and her own site, AnnieMueller.com. Find her on Twitter: @AnnieMueller.
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Pedro Batista 1 year 0 months and 3 days ago
Delegate, delegate, delegate...But delegating costs money and money is something small business don't have very often.Unless you have VC money, but companies with that aren't "small business"