3 Mistakes That Strangle Growing Businesses - 17th July 2019

Businesses want to grow and help a larger audience, but too many make mistakes that cripple their growth. Even worse, they keep repeating them! Here's how to avoid the basic business blunders.

Changing Your Product

Businesses always want to find new markets, and while they could woo customers in more places, creating new products is another way to reach a larger audience. Bringing a new product to market is an investment new businesses should consider, as long as they know the risks.

Instead of creating a new product from scratch, some businesses tweak their old ones. While this can work, change isn't always an improvement. Testing your product with consumers will help mitigate risk, but tastes shift quickly; fads don't stay popular forever.

Customers often develop an emotional connection to their preferred brands. Experimenting might feel like a betrayal of their trust, and it is almost impossible to win back a customer's loyalty. Growing businesses don't always have enough resources to create new products, and focusing on your successes might be your best strategy. You can even ask for customer feedback while you build capital.

Misinterpreting The Market

Demand shifts randomly. People don't always know what they want, and why, and products soar and plummet in popularity for reasons no business can predict. Sadly, too many companies overestimate their brilliance, and pay for their arrogance when their predictions and investments fail.

Understanding your niche will help you create reliable strategies. Infrastructure helps; liquidating assets quickly is better than storing them indefinitely. The more time you spend learning the intricacies of your niche, the more money you will save when a strategy fails.

Keep in mind, too, that predictions fail both ways. Some companies don't release products that would become hits, while others spend millions advertising obvious failures. Every miscalculation is an opportunity; learn and take advantage! For example, use a failed product launch to discover more about your core audience.

If your business sells great products and services, it will grow if you get out of the way. Every business should ponder the blunders outlined in their article; their customers' happiness could depend on it.

Hiring Toxic Personalities

Businesses hire more staff as they grow. But if they expand too quickly, they will feel pressure to fill positions on their team, even if the job candidates have a few personality flaws. While some people change, others don't, and a few toxic personalities will poison your company culture.

This is why controlling growth is so important. Though it is hard to predict, you can create a game plan when you exceed your projections. Creating a team of healthy personalities is another priority. If you don't, toxic employees will look for coworkers with similar values. If they can't find them, they will try to hire them!

But what personalities should your company avoid? There are many, but micromanagers are one of the most common. Instead of letting their coworkers do their jobs, they bug them over minor details, sabotaging team goals. Managers do manipulate emotions as part of their job, but some abuse this power. They will try to ruin people with gossip, or tell bosses what they want to hear, even when they know it is terrible advice.

Instead, always look for team members that value their coworkers and employer, and have enough emotional maturity to find and fix their own weaknesses. They will become better team members over time, and will face problems even when it makes them feel uncomfortable.

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