Prevent Business Failure By Planning Ahead

I wrote a list of top 6 reasons why businesses fail on the Self Starters Weekly Tips forum a few weeks ago. Forum owner Lynn Terry then published the list on her blog, Click Newz.

At your request, I’m providing answers to these problems based on my years of experience with selling products and services online.

This time, we’ll talk about the #4 reason businesses fail.

#4 Lack Of Planning

Recent advances in Internet speed and availability, and online software has made it incredibly easy to hang your shingle, so to speak, on the internet.

What ends up happening though is someone has a great idea. They run over to Watersweb Shops and buy a Shop Kit Plus. They hire Kristine to create a web design. They upload photos of their products that they’re selling through a dropshipping program.

And then they get stuck. They have no idea who they’re marketing to, where they’re going to find website visitors, much less customers.

Perhaps they muddle along and find some customers, or perhaps they lucked into having a built-in target market because they are well-known at an online forum. The next thing they know, people are buying their stuff like hotcakes and they can’t keep up with it.

A friend of mine had this problem with her diaper cake business. She made awesome diaper cakes and acheived a #1 ranking in the search engines. But success killed the business. She found herself, her kids and her husband struggling to fill the orders.

If she had had a plan for growing her business and handling success, she would have been able to outsource her production, train employees or subcontractors to take care of the overload.

Lack of customers and website traffic is not the only thing that will kill your business. Sometimes success will too, unless you plan for it.

My Solution: Plan to outsource, create a business plan and create a marketing plan. If you need help with your business plan, you can easily create one in just a couple of hours with One Page Business Plan.

If you’re not sure where you want to go, or need help solidifying your ideas, I’d love to work with you and help you. Just contact me through my business coaching page.