Written by: Nida Leardprasopsuk, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
It can be overwhelming for entrepreneurs when it comes to building businesses. Especially when there’s a problem and you keep solving it but the problem doesn’t go away. With more than twenty years of experience working with businesses and entrepreneurs, I noticed one thing. Successful entrepreneurs are the ones that are great at solving problems. But before the problems can be solved, they have to be diagnosed correctly first.
And that’s where most people get it wrong. A lot of the time, we see the symptoms and mistakenly think that they are the problems. Attempting to fix the symptoms, therefore, is not effective. The root cause is not solved, and the problem persists. In this article, I have summarized some key problems that I see most in businesses. What are symptoms and what are considered root cause problems, let’s look at each one?
A business idea is not unique and differentiated enough (or not at all).
This is a problem. Being just another me-too brand in the market is the last thing you want as an entrepreneur. You either be different and stand out or blend in and be ignored by the market. It takes more effort to be different but what most people don’t know is it will make things much easierrange for your business in the long term. Symptoms caused by this core problem ranges from low sales, low conversion, low profit, low return on advertising and marketing budget, customers unable to recognize and recall your brand and many more.
Offer was never validated.
This is a problem. Your offer has to convert before you think about advertising or growing. You have to see whether there is a real demand for your products and services. A lot of entrepreneurs make the common mistake of trying to invest in advertising to sell their products and services and when that fails, they think there is something wrong with the advertising. They then go on and try to fix the advertising strategy when a lot of the time the problem is actually the offer.
No clarity on the niche that you serve
With the word “niche” being one the most overused word in the world of entrepreneurship in my opinion, it’s surprising that many businesses are unclear about the niche they are serving. And the problem is not about having to narrow down to any one specific niche as much as it is about knowing who you serve and who you don’t. Hence, businesses become confused and end up targeting everyone they can sell to. In the expert-based business, this isn’t a good idea. As an “expert”, you gain deep expertise by serving particular groups of people repeatedly.
Charging too low and surprisingly, charging too high.
This one might seem like a root cause problem but it actually is a symptom that often times reflects low self-esteem and self-confidence. A lot of experts despite having decades of experience in their field don’t believe they deserve to charge high tickets. On the other hand, there’s also the problem of experts overvaluing their own expertise. They end up charging a price that just doesn’t match up with the level of expertise and quality of services delivered. The cause for this is the lack of self-awareness and fair evaluation of their expertise. They also don’t fully understand the clients deeper level problems and haven’t put in the effort to craft a high-quality solution to fix it. Both undercharging and overcharging eventually hurt your business in terms of sales, growth, and profitability.
Does not have enough leads. This is a symptom. Does not have a reliable system to attract and nurture quality leads consistently. This is the problem.
Do you have enough leads coming in consistently? You need to have a pipeline of customers in various stages of the sales funnel and an effective system to nurture them. This involves social media, content marketing, advertising, the right lead magnet, and branding to name a few.
Sales not converting well. This is a symptom.
What percentage of your leads actually convert to sales. How effective are your salespeople at conducting consultation calls with potential clients and closing sales? Sales not converting well is often a symptom of the real issue of lack of credibility. Perhaps your business is not differentiated enough or your offer isn’t appealing for your clients. Find out the root cause of why your sales are not converting and fix the real problem.
Low repeat purchase rate or high churn rate
What is your customer satisfaction level? Do you have a customer experience department, program, or at least an employee responsible for it. Someone needs to be actively gathering customer insight and feedback, develop plans to improve and innovate products and services, and constantly monitor the results without bias and attachment to their own performance. It is a mistake to have the very same employees that are delivering the services to your clients to be gathering feedback because of course they will always want to get a positive evaluation on their work and downplay the negative feedback from clients. That specific feedback however, is key to the development of your business. Given this human nature, it’s not surprising that most businesses fail within the first five years.
In order to understand whether you are providing top-notch services for your clients or not, you must have metrics to measure. A big mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make is using their gut feeling and paying attention to their raving fans and ignoring the clients that complain and choose to leave.
Low customer satisfaction therefore is a reflection of many things from poor leadership to employees lack of resources and skills. Do you have the right people to help you grow sustainably? People are the most important ingredient in expert-based businesses. Employees that lack the right mindset, soft skills, and hard skills will damage your business for years to come.
Your services need to be scalable. There is a common misbelief that you need to build a group program in order to scale and that is simply not true. Many coaches and experts end up compromising the quality of their services by replacing their high-quality one-on-one services for group programs. One of the things I help my clients with is scaling their one-on-one services without having to sacrifice other things. In order to do this, you need the right process and you need exceptional people to execute it.
Next let’s talk growth. Are you growing consistently?
It’s time to think about growth strategies. If you have checked all the boxes that have been mentioned. It’s now time to think about growth in your business. In order to grow, you have to either:
Sell more of your current services to your current market
Sell new services to your current market
Sell your current services to a new market
Sell new services to a new market
Lack of growth or decline in growth often times is caused from lack of innovation, failing to adapt to change in the the market and customer’s needs. You constantly need to invest in market research and innovation in order to stay competitive. Just because something works today doesn’t mean it will tomorrow.
Bad culture and bad leadership
I put these two together because they come as a package. Bad leadership creates bad culture and bad culture attracts bad leadership. If there’s a culture problem, it’s the CEOs responsibility. The CEO needs to be accountable and make the changes necessary.
Not profitable. Bad financial performance. This is a symptom caused from the multiple problems I have mentioned in this article.
I didn’t have the space to cover every single problem that businesses encounter but I hope this article was helpful in helping you diagnose the challenge you may be experiencing in your business and hopefully be able to fix it fast. Remember great entrepreneurs are the ones that are great problem solvers.
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Nida Leardprasopsuk, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Nida is a top-tier business consultant, mindset coach, and former Fortune 500 executive with more than two decades of experience in marketing, business, research, consumer behavior, and human psychology. Her consulting and coaching business centers around innovation and customer-centricity, a key factor in her own success. She helps forward-thinking and purpose-driven coaches, consultants, experts, thought leaders, and service providers reinvent, innovate, differentiate themselves from the rest of the competition, and become a category one by 1.) Discovering and utilizing their ultra-geniuses 2.) Creating groundbreaking solutions that solve clients’ problems in an innovative way 3.) Using a short and long-term innovative marketing strategy that magnifies their thought leadership over time and 4.) Help entrepreneurs innovate their businesses and build a culture of excellence.
She is the author of the One to Millions Entrepreneur and host of the One to Millions Entrepreneur Podcast show. She also has a master’s and bachelor’s degree in Business and Marketing and is currently completing her research for a Ph.D. in Social Psychology.
Nida offers 1:1 consulting and coaching services that help forward-thinking and purpose-driven entrepreneurs build a world-class legacy brand and hyper-grow their businesses through innovation and out-of-the-box thinking.
