IF YOU have a failing business, you might wonder what you can do to turn it around. Luckily, there are several steps you can take to save your business and make it successful again. We’ll discuss 5 strategies in this article.
Key Takeaways
- One of the first things you can do when you don’t have much money is to improve your business model. Are there any gaps? How can you make it more attractive to people?
- Start weeding out unprofitable customers by increasing your prices and refusing their demands. It’s better to lose a few challenging customers than it is to lose your business.
- If you have good customers who have bought from you in the past, contact them and see if they’d be interested in buying from you again.
How to Save Your Business from Failing
The best way to turn things around is by asking friends and family for funding, creating a better business model, cutting out unnecessary expenses, expanding your customer base, reading books, and working with a digital marketing agency.
1. Ask Friends and Family for Funding
When asking friends and family for funding, they may not be receptive to the idea if they don’t think you’re serious. That’s why it’s important to focus on your vision, have a business plan or at least some idea of what you want to do to improve your business, before you go to your friends and family.
They may not believe you’re serious, so try to keep their focus on what if it all works out. Have some idea of how much you’ll need to improve things, and how soon you think you can start seeing a profit. You may also want to see if you can get other friends or family members on board as partners to help you in the business, especially if they’ve got skills in areas that could be useful to you.
2. Create a Better Business Model
One of the first things aspiring successful business owners can do even when they don’t have much money is to create a business plan. A business plan includes a summary, objectives, goals, marketing plans, operation plans, management plans, and a financial plan. To get started, a business plan and a financial plan are essential. Everything else follows if your financial platform and your goals are solid.
3. Cut All Unnecessary Expenses
Being an entrepreneur is hard. To run a successful business, you must determine which expenses are necessary and which are not. One of the most common reasons new businesses fail is because they run out of money. That’s why creativity is important in decision making.
Cutting unnecessary expenses ensures you’ll have enough money to pay your important business expenses and still have money left over at the end of the month. You’ll do your best to satisfy your customers if you focus on keeping operations efficient. Getting caught up in internal goals and to-do lists can be easy, but success involves considering your customers’ needs in everything you do. Once you start making more money, you can take out a small business loan help your cash flow issues.
4. Expand Your Customer Base
When you have difficulty getting and keeping customers, you might wonder “why do I even try.” Getting new clients can be hard. The best way to start is to study the type of customer you want. Look for customers who want and need what you’re offering, pay full price, post great online reviews, and refer others. Find out what their needs are and why they choose your company.
5. Eliminate Unprofitable Customers
Some customers don’t pay fair prices for your goods and services. Due to their demanding and difficult nature, doing business with them costs more than with other clients. To determine whether this is your problem, review the time it takes to get different customers to pay you and deal with their calls for special requests. If you have multiple low-paying customers that are hurting your business, take the following steps:
Let go of the wrong customers – This first step can sound scary, especially if you’re in a tough position financially, but these customers may be the primary reason your company is struggling. Start weeding out the wrong customers by increasing their prices and refusing their demands. It’s better to lose a few challenging customers and save your business.
Increase your quality of customers – At the same time you’re getting rid of unprofitable customers, go back and look for the right people, and target them. This is the only way to attract higher-quality customers who value your products and pay you a fair market price, improving your current situation.
6. Read Books on How to Save Your Business
If you have the time, try to read a few business books. This helps to see your situation from a different perspective and allows you to frame the situation differently. Here are some of the best ones.
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- The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Reis
- Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
- Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don’t by Jim Collins
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
- Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins
- The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman
- ReWork by David Heinemeier Hansson
- The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber
7. Work With A Digital Marketing Agency
If you’re looking for ways to get more visibility online, a small business digital marketing agency like Vandy Marketing should be part of your marketing plan. Vandy Marketing provides all the services you need to attract and retain new customers:
- Learn what you’re doing well and what needs work with complete digital strategy audits
- Tell the story of your business with social media content and optimization
- Ensure your website looks good on mobile and that your copy is well-written
- Optimize your content for search engines and send traffic to your site
Digital marketing helps business owners like you because it gives you more time to focus on doing your job, rather than creating marketing strategies for your business. And at the end of the day, you’ll make more money because you’ll have more time to focus on the parts of your business that are important to you.
How to Save a Failing Business
That’s what you need to know about how to save your failing business. As you start implementing ideas, think about what you can do to improve your business right away.
If you have good customers who have bought from you in the past, contact them and see if they’d be interested in buying from you again or if they know anyone who might be interested in your products. Look at your expenses and cut whichever ones you feel are unnecessary right now. Once your business starts making more money, you can start spending more money again.
Frequently Asked Questions
Some of the most frequently asked questions.
1. What percentage of businesses fail?
According to Lendingtree, 18.4 percent of private businesses fail within the first year. After five years, about 49.7 percent of businesses have failed. After 10 years, 65.5 percent of businesses have failed.
2. Why do businesses fail?
Businesses fail for several reasons. The most common ones are cash flow problems, lack of demand for the product or service, and not researching the competition.