If you want your business to thrive long into the future – whether your ultimate aim is to work it until you retire, or to sell it off to a larger company in the field – then you have to be aware of threats to your survival and success. Today we’re taking a look at threats to your business so you can take informed decisions about how to plan around them.
The Competition
One of the biggest threats to your success as a business are, of course, the other businesses competing for customers in the same space as you.
The first step to planning around the opposition is identifying them: competitor research consultants can help you identify and rank the most significant competitors to you, in your market. When you know who they are, you can make decisions about how you’re going to hold your own in this marketplace. The most important thing you can do is identify what distinguishes you from your competition (positively, naturally) and lean into that aspect of your business, to ensure your customers have a clear reason to shop with you over anyone else. Market research can support you here, by replacing intuition with solid data about how you’re perceived.
Stagnation
Success can be its own worst enemy: a startling early breakthrough for your business can encourage you to take your foot off the pedal, and plateau. Meanwhile, hungrier startups are coming up behind you looking for those growth opportunities you’re ignoring and beginning to win over the customers you’ve stopped actively courting.
Linked to stagnation is the following threat:
Poorly Regulated Growth
It’s important to keep looking to the future, to identify opportunities for growth and ensure you’re at least maintaining your position if not actively improving it and growing your customer base and revenue streams. Unfortunately poorly planned growth can do severe damage to a brand. It can lead to taking on excessive financial risk, or to diluting your brand due to poor decisions. Opening new branches in the wrong locations, adding new products or services that don’t gel with your existing range or pushing new marketing that conflicts with the image you’ve built up can all harm your business, sometimes irreparably.
The way to deal with both these threats is to have a strong strategy guiding your business, which should protect your decision making from either excess. Growth strategy consultants can help you make plans that push you towards a safe and long term future!
