KNOWING TECHNOLOGY WITHOUT KNOWING THE MARKET PLACE AND THE COMPELLING NEED OF THE CUSTOMER DRAGS ENTREPRENEURIAL FAILURE OVER.
Producing the same products and offering the same services will not impact our world into striking change or transformation. Entrepreneurs who smarten up to solve difficult problems and invent new industries bring about a massive beneficial change in the social and economic dynamics of a society. Hence, threading your way to avoid entrepreneurial failure puts you within the bounds of success and fulfillment. The following steps outlined below sport as useful in staving off entrepreneurial failure.
At all events, put together a firm resolve to persevere and devote yourself to unrelenting efforts that bring in success. Even before writing a business plan, finding an opportunity and building a team, a true entrepreneur makes a solid commitment to stick at it until he succeeds. That unyielding commitment to give it his or her all, increases the chances of success.
Defining with clarity, a consumer problem that attracts your attention paves way for a viable solution to it. To escape entrepreneurial failure, the entrepreneur gets on for a commitment to be successful in the face of mounting challenges, and then strings along an idea that embodies a solution to the problem that he really wants to solve, a problem that is familiar to him. He focuses on the problem first, before turning to the solution. To focus first on the solution rather than the problem that demands solving often leads to entrepreneurial failure.
To care personally about a problem that needs solving rachets up the entrepreneur’s passion and ethusiasm. Good entrepreneurial opportunities take on a personal bias. An entrepreneur makes his business idea to work by focusing intently on problems that he is personally eager to solve. His commitment and enthusiasm really mount up because he personally cares about solving the problem. That commitment and enthusiasm fire him up and keep him going, even in the event of difficulties. Making the society better with his solution features prominently in his mind.
Operate in the right balance. Knowing technology without knowing the market place and the compelling need of the customer drags entrepreneurial failure over. Through the medium of knowing the market place, the entrepreneur identifies who he is selling to and how to reach them and also gets to choose a small or a big market. To choose an entry point, into the prefered market, that maximizes growth, the entrepreneur seeks to understand the forces at play in the market, ascertain the potential and expected costs, determine the face of the competition and develop an overall plan and strategy. Of a truth, a saturated market prompts entrepreneurs to think up new business models that disrupts industry orthodoxy. Jeff Bezos did that with Amazon when he turned to the internet to sell books. Having firsthand knowledge of an industry puts an entrepreneur in a position to identify problems that consumers truly want him to solve for them. Solving real customer problems, defines real entrepreneurs.
Get some valuable experience before striking out as an entrepreneur. If you are serious about becoming an entrepreneur and escaping entrepreneurial failure, it is wise for you to learn how to supervise, manage and lead on other people’s platform and resources.
Go into it for preventing customer pain rather than promoting pleasure. Businesses that get up to provide solutions leading to the termination or prevention of customer pain prove to be more successful than businesses that promote pleasure.
Connect with your sales people. Doning on the garb of a business owner and revelling in it rather than getting yourself up to the front line robs you of the opportunity of connecting with your sales people and learning about their frustrations and challenges. It stands to reason that being separated from your sales people also disconnects you from the problems of your customers. Not knowing real customer problems rends certain entrepreneurial failure.
Seek advice from people who have the life that you desire. Keep up to advice concerning the approach and strategy that saw your role models through, when they operated at your current phase of experience. Be schooled in the strategy that uplifted them from being entrepreneurs with only few customers, as it concerns you. Be true to your current situation and seek for advice to improve it.
Go for a mindset that delights in asking questions. Most times, employees get on with the habit of complying without asking questions. Transitioning from an employee to an entrepreneur to gain success and avoid entrepreneurial failure, means sticking with a mindset that entertains questions. Such questions that account for insights include “how can I become a better entrepreneur?” “how can I help the employees to be better?
Influence and lead your people rather than manage everyone’s success. For you to get the pressure of commanding your people to do this and that, off your shoulders, and create a conducive work environment for your people, set an example of how you want things to be done. By the aid of the example, you stand to influence your people forward with ease.
Avoid spending on credit. To spend on a big lifestyle with hopes of making up the money from future sales and successes, often backfires without warning. You have to be in business for you to grow your business.
Stick to one product at the start rather than vacillating here and there, chasing after the next big thing. Investors prefer an entrepreneur who perseveres in a particular industry in order to master that industry over another who shuffles from one industry to another. Searching here and there for the hot passion of the day, with a lack of commitment is a recipe for entrepreneurial failure.
Hold yourself accountable. Challenge yourself; create a schedule and stick to it.
At the onset, let your business plan be about actionable goals and habits to learn and apply every day. Goals like making two hundred and fifty business calls, giving out fifty business cards and reading for two hours everyday increase the possibility of success. With the passage of the years, you get to master the business and its cycles, and then equip yourself to prepare a more detailed business plan.
It makes sense to reason that a lack of persistence, commitment and a will to pursue the right knowledge rends certain entrepreneurial failure.
