Five reasons why your business is not growing

I am sharing with you a big secret about my coaching system, to begin with. Since the last 6 years, every week I make sure to meet clients for a cup of coffee apart from formal coaching sessions. It allows me to understand their general philosophy of life and business. As a coach, it helps me to understand their lifestyle and choices better. As a person it allows me to connect with them deeply, more than just an advisor so to say.

After having over 200 sessions I am writing this piece as truly as possible. Businesses grow because of a great product, scalable business model, robust business plan, outstanding partnerships; quite true. After seeing a fair amount of success, why they don’t grow; absence of these? Not always.

In my experience business doesn’t grow because of the following reasons:

1.    Lack of vision of founder/ senior leaders: Many times the product is great, the model is scalable but the vision of founder or leaders doesn’t grow enough. They fail to use their creative skills and think out of the box to see the future. In the struggle of survival, it often happens that the ones who start it, have to settle with routine or making both ends meet. Unfortunately, passing this lack of vision to their team members happens unconsciously and it becomes a pattern in the company.

2.    Urge to control: Small business owners often feel they have to be at their offices most of the time, executing plans, managing employees to get work out of them and hence not giving time to business development, collaborations, and innovation. It’s a serious concern among SMB fraternity. Mind you, if your business can not run without you, YOU are in deep trouble.

3.    Too much focus on sales, too little on value: Sales mean revenue so a lot of focus is always given to push the sales and grow customers. In this process often the natural scaling factors such as the scope of improvement, enhancing customer experience, having repeat clients is compromised. Business growth is directly proportional to the value your product delivers to the customers. Satisfied customers mean business growth through referrals and word of mouth. Initial few years the focus must be on building great product and services and monetizing it in the long run. Not to mention that it shall always be a part of the growth strategy.

4.    Operational Hazards: For any business to survive and grow, seamless operations are a must. When the operations are fraught at any level, chances are business will suffer. This also means firefighting issues every now and then. The operation plan shall always be well thought and leak proof. Whatever gaps are shall be filled in at the testing level or within a few weeks of launch. Going full swing with operational issues can create more damage than growth.

5.    Failing at culture: when you hit the right customer at the right time, it’s also the right time to build a culture of growth, creativity, customer orientations, and cohesion. Most business owners fail to do so in their zest to increase sales and grow physically. It can happen in many different ways and possibilities. For e.g. a cut-throat competition between team members may lead to less cooperation among them or not having an open culture for sharing ideas may lead to lack of motivation among employees.

There may be other reasons why business fail. In my personal experience, these are largely the reasons why businesses with best of talent and a great business model fail to grow.

Feel free to share your challenge or opinion at my LinkedIn inbox or email saritachauhan[email protected]

Happy Hustling!