As a business owner you know it’s tough. Challenges arise every day that threatens your success and livelihood. But do you know who is really hurting your business right now? Can you identify the risks your company is facing and the obstacles to growth and profit? This goes beyond the standard SWOT analysis. Instead, dig deeper to see exactly who the culprits are in places you never expected to find them:
Your Systems
Customers are wonderful. The more you have, the more money you make. So why don’t you have more customers? Your own ordering systems could be hurting you rather than helping your customers to do business with you. Streamlining your order processes isn’t always easy, but it is certainly worth doing. Test it every month yourself and find the areas that could be refined. Simple things like identification verification can be long-winded and off-putting. Seek the most highly recommended service for identity verification to help your customers navigate your service.
Your Customer Service Team
Whenever you have to phone or email the companies you deal with personally, you reach a customer service team. How is your enquiry handled? Is it answered immediately, or are you fobbed off with an apology and no action? Always make notes of what you like and what you don’t like about other company customer service teams. How a customer or prospect customer is treated will make them choose to do business with you or not. Train and retrain your team by highlighting the best and the not so great call-handlers.
Your Data Security Team
Whether you do this in-house or you contract it out, these are the people that will be taking care of your data. How good are they? Have you ever been hacked? Have you ever lost data? If you haven’t asked that question of them recently, you need to ask now. If news of a problem in the past only broke today, then your reputation could be ruined. Your business may be fined, sued or even prosecuted. No system can ever be 100% free of errors or problems. So long as you’re ready to fix them as they arise, you could be able to save your data.
Your Competitors
Let’s face it – it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. Your competitors are going to do whatever it takes to take your slice of the market and prevent you getting it back. Your marketing strategy should be updated regularly. This means analyzing in full what your competitors are offering. You have to differentiate. If they start moving into your market space, then focus on your unique selling points. Find new ones. Diversify and disrupt. It’s down to you. Sitting there while you’re blaming the competition for being too good isn’t going to boost your profits.
The one person who is most capable of hurting your business is you. As the owner of any company, it’s down to you to make sure everyone else is pulling their weight. Lead them, direct them, inspire them. Find the weaknesses and seek the problems. Only you can decide what the best solution is.
