Told you so! 3 Business Mistakes You Probably Have Already Made!

Nobody likes to be told they are wrong. That’s it, plain and simple. Sometimes it’s just a sign of a low Emotional Quotient (EQ) in the person dishing out the ‘bad news’ in a derogatory way. It could be the person on the receiving end if they take it all wrong and have made an error in their understanding and interpretation of the message.

Successful entrepreneurs and business owners who are in for the long game know that they make mistakes and they see them as a part of the learning process, not a failure, especially if the criticism is constructive and comes from a well-meaning place. So, what are these three common mistakes. In this blog I’ll explain them to you and if you are smart enough to read all the way to the bottom (without jumping there now!) I will show you why right now, in the middle of this terrible pandemic, you have the opportunity to hit the ground running when business opens up again.

#Mistake No 1.

Online business owners, like myself, have been wincing at the loss of so many businesses that have the traditional bricks and mortar offices and staff at work in situ behind desks during the recent pandemic. We have been asking all along whether all businesses still need office space. It is 2020 and so many things can be done online. The Covid pandemic has proved how people can work from home when trained and motivated.

However, of course, there are exceptions to the rule. Nobody wants to go on holiday and have their hotel room cleaned by a person online so let us use common sense and discuss the businesses that can work from home.

Traditional travel agents are one good example. Those of us getting long in the tooth can remember our annual trip to the High Street Travel Agent, before the days of the internet, to look through the glossy brochures and then have a chat with the nice sales person who was hopefully well travelled or at the very least well versed in the resorts and locations they are selling.

Then once decided, we offered over our cash or credit card and the holiday was booked and we got a lovely envelope that was our promise of a wonderful time and we looked forward to the day we could go. It was part of the holiday excitement to many of us.

However do you know anyone under 40 years old who goes to a travel agent on the main street in this day and age? It moved almost completely online; there is hardly any need to go to a travel agent anymore. This is a per-cursive warning to so many businesses, that in fact almost everything can be done working from home.

Look hard at your business. Can you save a substantial amount on your bottom line and work from home?

# Mistake No 2.

Number 2 is something I see every day with startups is registering a business too early. I remember speaking to my mentors in UK when setting up our UK operation (online of course) and they told me that the Tax Office recognize there is a period of time between starting your business and registering your business at Companies House.

Many of these costs you incur in this period can actually be considered as business costs after you registered and are therefore tax deductible, so you need to keep all receipts even before you have a certificate and memorandum.

Ideally, business registration should come out of your profits so why pack out your own family money for this? However, vanity gets in the way of so many business owners; they feel that having ‘Limited’ after their business name will make people trust their business more, which is complete nonsense. People trust people not whether you are a sole trader or Limited company or a P.L.C…

# Mistake No 3.

But by far the biggest mistake I see every day is business owners who feel they should spend a huge amount of their budgets or marketing activities and lead generation when in reality they are forgetting their core aim which is to get sales. But how do you get leads without engaging in a lot of branding and marketing?

They believe sales come from writing many blogs and posting on social media sites, growing your reach on social media, so you can have someone, anyone, to see your blogs posts, email marketing and growing a list of subscribers, attending exhibitions at great cost and joining many business clubs and chambers. Sadly for many this is the time and money expensive activities burns them out physically and burns out their cash flow before they make it.

Marketing is hard work, and very time expensive. Marketing is now a much bigger science since the introduction of the Internet and all of us had to learn how to utilize digital marketing for our businesses. Learning is tiring. The brain is a big muscle, well for most of us.

Because the internet is such a young tool to master, so many of us are making the mistakes in learning and improving each day, only for it all to change overnight and we are back to the classroom for more costly seminars.

Every good business leader is adept at outsourcing to people who know and enjoy what they are doing. I advise business owners every day to find someone who already has a list, the database of business owners, the social media reach on all the important platforms, and has a community of business owners who are willing to provide business information each day that arrives in the form of buying requests that we match to our members each day.

At leads4biz, we have the leads that are derived from years of work and experience just so you can contact our qualified sales leads and make an appointment with a decision maker who wants to buy now and has the cash now with none of the pain of in-house lead generation that you hate doing anyway! Our job is to give you sales leads for people who want to buy your products and services.

Our aim is to give you sales leads for people who want to buy your product or service. We reverse the process giving the sales leads to you so that you can concentrate on increasing revenue and generating more profit.  In this way, we move the process from sales teams to procurement teams and we ensure that all our leads are genuine.

Whatever your business, come and visit us and see what we can do to help you. Now is a great time to be looking at supply chains and how to improve your business practices.

Take the opportunity and see how leads4biz can work for you.