Ade Olabode: 3 Things To Do For Long Term Survival As a Business Owner

You can say every day is relentless for a business owner. There are so many things that require our attention – on a daily basis. I know this because I’m a business owner myself – I run PrognoStore – where I get to help other business owners to run their business better. Despite the flurry of activities, the overall daily focus is still the same – keep your customers happy which helps you earn revenue.

So how do you actually take care of your customers and in the process make money? You definitely shouldn’t be leaving success to a roll of the dice. Below are 3 areas you can work on to make the odds in your favour:

Strategic Focus
All businesses must have a vision clearly stated and preferably written down in black and white. Visions provide the requisite strategic focus. It provides the needed direction. You don’t need an elaborate business plan;  however, you do need to have short term and long term goals you are aiming to achieve. The key thing this helps you do, is to give you the ability to track how well you’re doing… or not doing.

Processes
These are the vehicles that will drive you to your destination. Optimised processes enable you to achieve your visions. Your business processes can be seen as the engine that drives your business. Some of the critical business processes you need to take care of are;

• Sales Process – How do you sell? This should take a significant chunk of your time. If you are staying up late at night because of your business, then your effort should focus on cracking and optimizing your sales process.
• Customer Support Process – How do you support your customers and how well do you do that? Review your after sales, return & refund policies, in-store support for customers to mention a few. Are your customers getting the much-needed help and support to make their buying/shopping experience meaningful? You essentially need to know your customers to survive.
• Marketing Process – Do people really know much about you? If not, how can they get to hear about you and your business? You can no longer build a mouse trap and expect customers to build a path to your door. Take the game to them! Of course, you know so much about digital marketing so you need to harness the power of social media. Digital marketing is often seen as a long term game, so keep plugging away.
• Recruitment Process – The success of your business depends almost entirely on the people you recruit. Great people who are dedicated will follow the processes put in place and will ultimately deliver great results. A thorough review of your recruitment process is essential if you have consistently had employees who have not really added much value to your business. You can read more on how to recruit the best here

Tools
The processes in place will determine the type of tools required to get things done. You need great tools to help you deliver great results. There are several great tools out there that will give you the power to run your business on your own terms.

Such tools are not developed as mobile apps to ensure seamless operations. (accounting, sales, reports, logistics, inventory management etc. All these tools can be integrated to provide powerful analytics to run your business. For instance in PrognoStore, analytics provide insights needed to run your store more efficiently, because they provide the required business information to make those strategic decisions. I have written a lot on tools and you can read more here and  here.

That’s all folks! So do you agree with my 3 things to do to ensure long-term daily survival? Or perhaps you would have considered other points to be more important – please leave your comments so we can all learn.