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Believe me, I know.
The final contributing factor to death of sixty-three percent of businesses who died from bad management was that owners had no relevant or applicable business experience.
Bad financial planning was second reason sited by survey as to why most businesses fail. In business, it's always about money. According to U.S. Bank study, eighty-two percent of business failures studied reported poor cash flow management as a contributing factor to death of business.
Seventy-nine percent of businesses were inadequately funded, and seventy-seven percent miscalculated cost of doing business. In other words, they failed to take into account all of costs involved when setting price for their products.
Let's move on to my favorite subject: bad marketing. You've heard me preach this sermon before. You can have greatest product in world, but if your marketing efforts are inadequate or ineffective you will end up with a warehouse full of greatest product that no one in world has ever heard of.
The study showed that bad marketing was a contributing factor in death of sixty-four percent of businesses surveyed. Many of these misguided entrepreneurs either minimized importance of marketing and promotion or ignored it totally.
A vital part of marketing is knowing who your competition is and always knowing what they are up to. The entrepreneur who ignores his competition is a fool (gee, was that too harsh?) and is always destined to fail, as proven by fifty-five percent of dead businesses in survey who either didn't even know who their competition was or simply chose to ignore competition altogether.
Here's a nice hole in sand for you, sir.
Please insert your head…
Another mistake made by forty-seven percent of deceased businesses was that they relied on just one or two customers for bulk of revenues. This is a common mistake made by many business owners who devote all their energy to one huge client. What they don't seem to understand is that if that one customer goes away, so does most of their revenue.
When performing your business autopsy you might identify other contributing factors that were beyond your control, such as a down economy, lack of qualified employees, new government regulations that negatively affect way you must do business, failure of a strategic partner, etc..
There will always be things you can't control. The key to business success is to keep control of those things you can and do everything you can to prepare for those things you can't.
Next time we'll discuss a few things you should and should not do to help ensure your business success.
Here's to your success.
Tim Knox tim@dropshipwholesale.net For information on starting your own online or eBay business, visit http://www.dropshipwholesale.net
Tim Knox as the president and CEO of two successful technology companies: B2Secure Inc., a Web-based hiring management software company; and Digital Graphiti Inc., a software development company. Tim is also the founder of dropshipwholesale.net, an ebusiness dedicated to the success of online entrepreneurs. http://www.dropshipwholesale.net http://www.smallbusinessqa.com