As the great Benjamin Franklin once said, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
With all the moving parts of a business to look after, it’s no wonder that some things fall through the cracks, in turn affecting your business growth and bottom line profits.
Here are five mistakes that will diminish your profits, or maybe even kill your business, if not dealt with immediately.
1. Inconsistent Marketing
It’s just not enough to publish one Facebook post or a couple of tweets every week. Likewise, ignoring your email list is also detrimental to your business. If you don’t keep up with a consistent marketing plan, people will forget your name, will forget how they ended up on your email list, or forget why they’re following you on social media. These forgotten people need to be won over yet again and they need to hear and see your company name on a consistent basis before they decide to spend money on your products or services. A business coach can offer solutions and ideas to make your marketing more consistent and more effective.
2. Failure to Automate
Are you stuck in the old school way of doing things, like making phone calls to confirm appointments, instead of using SMS technology to send text message reminders to confirm? Even posting on social media can be automated using platforms such as Hootsuite or Meet Edgar. Yes, these automation tools cost money, but when you compare the monthly or annual costs to the cost of an employee or a virtual assistant doing the same task, you find they are actually money savers. The old school ways are much more time consuming, which costs you much more money in the long run. A business coach will be knowledgeable about the latest technology that can help you automate while sticking within your budget.
3. Poor Branding or Messaging
What is your company’s mission? What is your Unique Selling Point? If you can’t answer these two questions, you need to revisit your messaging and your business image. Branding is more than your logo and business colors; branding is your overall image and what you promise to your customers. A business coach can ask the right questions that help you drill down to those core principles that drive your business.
4. Bad Money Management
What processes do you have in place for your bookkeeping and paying your monthly invoices? Do you have any idea what your income vs expense spreadsheet looks like? Do you have a habit of buying training classes that you don’t have time to use? There’s no reason you should be surprised at tax time with how much (or how little) profit you made in the last year. Businesses that are positioned for growth have good money management solutions in place, and a business coach can help you create a budget for your business along with solid processes for handling your monthly expenses.
5. Reluctance to Reinvest in Your Business
Think of reinvesting as a way to grow your business. Instead of taking the extra profits out to pay yourself every month, keep those profits in the business and use them to hire a virtual assistant, purchase software or training tools that will help your business, or invest in a business coach. Each of these reinvestment options will help your business run more efficiently so you can have more time to serve your customers and prospects. Of course, you should pay yourself a salary every month. It’s the profits (or a percentage of the month’s profits) that should remain in the business to help it grow.
As you can see, a business coach can help you get these business mistakes rectified, and offer more solutions for your growth. Contact me today for a discovery call.
Photo by NeONBRAND
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