Often, I am asked globally about the things that can help business development and grow the business. It is interesting that rarely am I asked about the things that will hurt a business, prevent it from growing or surviving.
Both are important for a business to grow and to survive. When I teach, coach and advise about business development, I cover both the things that can be done to grow business and the things that can prevent it or hurt the business. Like a car or auto; even if you have a car that runs well and has tires, if you are stuck on ice or in mud, you will only spin your tires and go nowhere, and if you are on a hill or decline you will slip downwards and maybe even crash and have an accident. You need everything working well and in good conditions. The same is true with business development. You need both, to be doing the progressive things that will help grow the business and also aggressively improving all of the things that can prevent business growth or hurt the business.
The big influencing factors for managing both are:
1. Leadership and Management Attitudes
2. Leadership and Management Skills & Knowledge
3. Processes, Procedures and Programs
Since most people do not ask me what will hurt business, I will start listing these.
Doing things that hurt the business or prevent business growth is similar to getting a gun and shooting yourself in the foot and then wonder why you cannot walk, run or climb forward.
Let’s start with these first.
Things That Will Hurt the Business and Prevent it From Growing
1. Obsolete & end of life cycle Products & Services
2. Competition has better & more current products & services
3. Quality problems & issues
4. Delivery issues & problems
5. Not competitive pricing
6. High overhead causing high pricing & maybe low profits
6. Possible government regulations & laws in countries selling to
7. Possible tariffs & taxes in countries selling to
8. Possible government barriers of countries selling to
9. Possible environmental & cultural challenges in countries selling to
10. Bad PR public relations about any issue
11. Lack of brand name & brand image
12. Lack of representation or distribution in target markets & countries selling to
13. High employee turnover due to a variety of issues
14. Lack of continual training for all employees
15. Low employee morale & maybe not a good work environment
16. Lack of good ‘ethics’ of company, leadership, management, employees; lying & misleading & not honest
17. Lack of skills & knowledge, experience & abilities of leadership, management & employees
18. Lack of true team work with management & employees
19. Lack of innovation & creativity with many things
20. Lack of good marketing communications clearly showing features, benefits, advantages & value to customers from customers view with each target market niche and each international markets
21. Lack of clear strategy with programs, process & aggressive efforts in place to support it
22. A bad strategy
23. Lack of understanding of customers in all target niche markets and international markets
24. Lack of insights & understanding of progress needed, market changes, customer needs & view changes, & potential future business in many markets development
25. Any disregard to employees, customers, markets & trends
26. Not being able to recruit, hire & retain the highest skilled employees & staff
27. Lack of effective communications with employees, customers & markets
28. Lack of keeping on the front edge of everything, internal & external
Things That Can Help Business Development
1. Products & Services that customers need
2. Competitive pricing
3. High quality
4. Good & fast delivery
5. Depth of marketing communications that clearly communicate features, benefits, advantages & value to customers & niche target markets
6. Aggressive & good PR public relations and advertising promotions
7. Aggressive progressing with brand name & image
8. Continual progressive efforts to understand customers & markets and continually aggressively solicit (ask) for suggestions, ideas, improvements needed, other possible applications & uses, other market niches, market changes, changes & trends
Such programs to be progressive for both customers & all employees
9. Effective referral programs
10. Effective incentive & reward programs for all employees
11. Continual training for all employees
12. Recruiting, hiring & retaining highly skilled & ethical employees
(this includes possibly paying more than average to accomplish this)
13. Expand into more target niche markets
14. Expand into more applications & uses
15. Expand into new markets international/global
16. Expand representation & distribution into new target markets
17. Adjust & customize products, services & marketing communications to target niche markets & international markets
18. Seek out ways to improve in all ways & have programs to do so with rewards & incentives for such & for all employees
19.An understanding that 80 to 90 percent of good ideas & suggestions on everything will come from employees & customers; and the need for programs & processes in place to effectively manage this & reap benefit from this
20. Programs, processes, incentives & rewards & sincere recognitions for team work & teams efforts
A bunch of sticks together is stronger than a single stick. Go outside and pick up some tree branches & sticks to test this out. This simple task will help you understand the strength of team work & team effort.
21. Continual improvement & innovations is needed for products, services, marketing communications & promotions and internal operations of all types. Effective programs, processes, & adequate levels of incentives & rewards are needed to support such
22. Affective programs & training & hiring practices is needed to assure high ethics
23. Continual affective communications with employees, customers & market niches is needed. Communications to include a closed loop system which is communications with them; ask & get feedback from them & then you communicate back to them to make sure all understood all correctly One way communications do not work and are not affective
24. Understanding the needs of your employees, staff & customers and have programs and efforts in place to manage this effectively meet these needs There are many other things that we can add to both of these lists of things that can prevent business development and things that can help business development. If you ask your staff, employees and customers about such, you will easily find things to add to these two lists. The big question is, ‘what will you do with these two lists to help grow your business?”.
