8 Biggest Mistakes Most New Entrepreneurs Make
As a Business start-up strategists with over a decades worth of small business experience I have seen a pattern in the mistakes most newbie entrepreneurs make. It is the same mistakes I have made myself.
I have compiled some of the top mistakes in this article, things I wish I had known on my journey that would have saved me a lot of time, money and energy. It is my intention that those of you in your startup journey will use this as a go to resource to help you reach your goals faster.
- Not having a clear and simple message: The problem you solve needs to be crystal clear. This message needs to be everywhere and you need to be able to communicate it concisely. This should be clearly placed on your profiles and websites in an optimised way.
Your message needs to be so simple that literally a 5-year old should be able to understand what you do. A confused message leads to a confused customer which leads to a confused mind who will walk away.
2. Not making enough offers: The reality is you need to make offers to be able to sell. It is tempting in the early stages to be so passionate about what you do, that you get carried away spending time on the wrong things. You should be selling your products or services every single day either on the front or back end or both. You can have a system running in the backend to generate sales or leads or be marketing direct offers with clear call to actions. It may feel strange at the beginning but the more you do, the easier it becomes and the more sales you make.
3. Not launching quick enough: Newbies especially fall into the trap of perfectionism and tend not to launch quick enough because they feel their product or service is not perfect. Done is always better than perfect here.
You want to get in the habit of launching all the time, the sooner you gain feedback from your market the quicker you can tweak it to make it better this won’t happen if you do not put your product or service to market.
4. No clear sales process in place: You can do this by having a sales funnel. A sales funnel is literally just having a pathway system in place which your audience can filter through from awareness to consideration before they become a customer. Your sales process does not have to be complicated but you should have one in place. A savvy business owner is always thinking ahead.
5. No follow-up system: You may have done all the work that I have mentioned above and managed to attract customers to purchase, but if you do not have a follow up system in place you are probably leaving money on the table by not following up.
Fact is customers who have already bought from you or engaged with you are easier to convert again and will have less resistance to buying from you than someone coming into your world brand new. Having a follow up system is often just the extra touch point needed from you for another purchase.
6. No Data log: This is something i personally did not have in my business for a long time and wish i had started collating earlier. Monitoring your data will be instrumental in reducing the length of time you spend on lead generation using techniques that do not work. Monitoring data will allow you to ;
1. understand what is working
2. what’s is not working
3. What you can do differently
You want to be collating data like conversations, average spend of customers, product/service sales and more. The thing is without data you’re just making decisions in your business from a place of assumption. When you start recording data it will empower you to no longer operate from a place of guess work
7. Over Complicating Things: In business the simpler you make things, the easier it becomes. Drop the complication and you also have more fun. Focus on a few strategies on a few platforms.
As a newbie when you overcomplicate business you become overwhelmed which then leads to procrastination. keep it simple and you will see everything fall back into place.
8. Not Focusing On Marketing: As amazing as your product or service may be if there are no eyeballs on what you are doing you will not make sales. marketing is having a process in place that will effectively fill up your funnel with leads. Invest your time, money and energy into mastering the basics of marketing even before you may choose to outsource it.
Once you find your winning marketing strategy after testing you milk it. You marketing strategy in the early stages will probably comprise of free organic methods. You want to aim for one paid and one free strategy at a time.
If you need any further support with growing and scaling an online business then be sure to follow my youtube channel: http://bit.ly/SubscribeToCharlotteYouTube or My Facebook group: bit.ly/TheFemaleEntrepreneurCollective for exclusive content.
