by Michael Schuitemaker, Featured ContributorInstead of hope, the way to turn around a business is to face up to the mistakes made. Acknowledge failures and be brave enough to admit them. Only then can you learn from them and not repeat them. Every successful company, EVERY ONE, lives by the graces of their customers. Listen to them, be absolutely sure that what you offer is in line with the customer’s needs. Then look internally and run your business so that profit can be made providing the goods or services your customer wants. It really is that simple.
Identifying the customer’s needs is easily done by designing a survey to those customers that bought from you and one for those customers that didn’t. Why did they buy, why didn’t others? You need to know the answers to both. Design a survey that can yield results that can be used by the marketing and sales department to better formulate your products offered. You need to know your successes as much as your failures. Obviously, there are many more failures that successes, otherwise your business wouldn’t be in trouble to begin with. Why did you lose the sale? What was it that turned your customer off? Having a customer is hard enough, winning him back after losing him is infinitely harder.
Quantify your successes and quantify your losses. Be clear about your position in the market. From this position can you plot the course to revival. The answers you find might not be what you want to hear but they might be the truth. Do you want to turn your business around? If so, abandon your ego, abandon hope, embrace your customers and what they’re telling you. Go and make your business the success story it deserves to be!
[su_dropcap style=”flat”]H[/su_dropcap]AVE YOU EVER MET with a CEO that was in charge of an ill performing company that had “hope”? Hope things would get better, hope customers would start buying, hope the economy would pick up? The strategy for the turn around was based only on hope. Has this ever worked? As a rule; no. No, hope is not a good strategy for turning around a failing business. Hope masks the need for insight and hard work. Hope puts the blame for continued failure at another’s doorstep. Hope is not a good strategy.