3 Reasons Why Your Business Isn’t Growing

1. No Clear Strategy or Vision – When you’re not clear on why you’re in business or the results your business is delivering, it’s extremely difficult to grow it. If you don’t know the direction you’re going in, it’s very easy to get off track and loose focus.

 

2. Lack of Systems – A solid business is comprised of good systems. A system is defined as two or more moving parts working together for one common goal. If you don’t have systems in place, your business will fail very quickly. It’s essential to have systems in place for business development, marketing and advertising. We’ve all heard the phrase “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.” That same thing applies to growing and operating business. There will always be problems and kinks in the system, but you don’t have to destroy the whole system, just fix the one problem and move forward. If you stay focused on solutions, problems will not be obstacles of progress, but instead they will be opportunities for growth.

 

3. Lack of Marketing/Advertising – One of the most common pitfalls for business owners is marketing and advertising. You must market and advertise your business or product. If no one knows about you they can’t benefit from what you have and ultimately you don’t make money. To be clear, marketing involves the strategies of obtaining business. Advertising involves presenting your business message or product in forms of media (billboards, online ads, print ads, social networks, television, radio, etc.)

 

First you should figure out why it’s not growing. Go back to step one and analyze what you did and figure out where you went wrong. This may be difficult to do, considering it is your business and it’s not growing. We strongly recommend that you seek a business consultant.

What to Do When Your Business Isn’t Growing

Recognize and accept that it’s not growing. Determine if you want to improve the business to profitability or step away from it and close your doors.

If you want to shut it all down, take the necessary precautions. If you have a partner, then you need to discuss the situation with him/her/them. You certainly don’t want any bad blood with anyone concerning business because that follows you. Next, pay off any remaining bills or debts. Another important step in closing your business is to notify your employees (if any) and customers. You can’t just disappear. What if you want to reopen at some point– you want your employees and customers to return. It’s very bad business to just up and shut down without prior notice. You want your exit to be pleasant.

Now on the other hand, if you want to improve it, then you should proceed forward by locating the problem. You can do that two different ways. You can seek help from a business consultant. Or you can try to work it out yourself. But, obviously that hasn’t worked thus far. So, find a business consultant to help you patch things up. A business consultant will help you figure out why your business has not been growing. You want to keep this process as easy as possible; simply retracing your steps back the beginning when your first started your business can accomplish this.

There is another tool that you can use to analyze your business. It’s called a SWOT Analysis. SWOT Analysis is a structured planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture.

 

For further reading: 3 Reasons Why Your Business Isn’t Growing