When it comes to entrepreneurship, there are many reasons
why a start up business may fail. It
could be a lack of knowledge of the field or not enough planning prior to
launch. The owner may become quickly
overwhelmed by the responsibility of running a company and the stress can
overtake the possibility of success.
Some businesses get past the first troubles of starting a new company,
but quickly get consumed by the competition.
In the world of the Entertainment industry and regarding talent
management specifically, the biggest obstacle is maintaining lucrative
clients. The business that is show
business is one of the most, if not the most competitive industry to gain
employment and be successful in. You can
be managing the most talented up and coming band in the industry and still not
be guaranteed an easy road to find good paying work for your artist. Although networking, knowledge, and being
open to multiple avenues of income for your client can help; a deep focus is
necessary to maintain a profitable company.
John Jantsch addresses this deeper focus.
In the blog How to Build a Business That Cannot Fail,
Jantsch is precise and specific in three major focuses that can help keep your
start up business out of the gutter. The
first topic Jantsch discusses is probably the one that businesses miss out
most, which is the concentration between your customer focus and your business
focus. Often times a business idea is
built on the notion of building a profit through selling a product or
service. Although this is important,
Jantsch makes the point that in order to sell those products or services you
need to maintain a client base or you won’t have anyone buying what you’re
selling. Considering the consumer is
necessary in order for your idea to launch and maintain success, why not build
your business on the customer experience instead of the product
experience? He makes a great point. It can be to your advantage to work this way
if you have the proper people skills.
Everyone wants to make money and everyone enjoys spending money. Instead of building a product and searching
for the customer, identify your customer first and find out what product they
are looking to buy. Bam! Identifying the appropriate market you want
to work in and doing the proper research to discover what is missing in that
market that you could bring to those clients will most certainly give your
business a greater opportunity for success.
That is not to say that every business decision made should be done
strictly by looking at the opinion of your cliental. The point Jantsch is making is that too many
companies lose sight of their customers.
The notion to stop listening to your customers will only lead to the
eventual demise of your business. They
are your greatest assets next to your team.
The second idea is to test and evolve your product. Don’t be set in stone on what you’re selling
and critique yourself against your competition as much as possible. It’s vital for a beginning company to compare
what they are selling against the competition.
Doing so is like receiving free customer feedback without spending a
dime on your own product. Being able to
see what attracts people to your competitor’s product, what they do and don’t
like about it, and even things such as brand strategy and pricing can all be
researched and analyzed with real-time data if you study your current
competition’s strategies. This is often
times missed by entrepreneurs. A person
dedicates their blood, sweat, and tears for years to develop the perfect product
and often times becomes so infatuated that they refuse change. History has shown us that this business model
doesn’t work. Henry Ford is a great
example of this. He was so in love with
his original Model-T that he refused innovation and change amongst his
designers, up to the point that he fired some of his most promising
employees. This almost cost Ford his
company, but luckily he woke up just in time.
Don’t make this same mistake with your business. Showing humility and absorbing feedback instead
of deflecting it will serve your business much better both in the short and
long term vision of your company.
The last idea is by most accounts the most difficult to
achieve because of the time and effort it takes to develop. Having a strong sales action process is
vastly important if you want to offer a consumer something to purchase. Customers aren’t just buying a product
anymore; they are buying an experience.
To be honest, actually, that is going to sell your company more than the
product or service you offer will. It’s
2012; every market is saturated in some way.
The best way to differentiate yourself from your competition is by the
way you handle your day-to-day business.
A strong sales process brings your clients back to shop with you again
because they cannot receive the same experience elsewhere. Once you have that sales process down, your
customers becoming your marketing. Word of mouth can be a very powerful marketing tool, and first hand accounts of
great experiences won’t stay unnoticed.
When it’s all said and done, the primary point to keep a
business from failing is this: customer, customer, customer. We live in a world where most big businesses
have lost track of the client experience and the consumers are starting to
fight back. Companies like Circuit City
and Blockbuster have gone belly up because they lose focus of their customer’s
needs and wants and don’t evolve their services to meet the growing
expectations. Following Jantsch’s
suggestions to keep a strong business model can only help in your strategy to
maintain a successful company. Really, at
the end of the day, the Darwin Theory of Evolution is the perfect example of
what running a business is all about; adapt or die.
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