SolveYourProblem
eBusiness Series:
How To Start
Your Own Retail Business
From Preparation To Profitability
( 15 Pages )
Common
Mistakes for New Businesses
As mentioned a
bit earlier, at least 80% of new businesses fail within their
first year of being open. There are many reasons why businesses
tend to fail, and it is best to list them here so that you
can try to avoid making these common mistakes when you open
your retail business.
Advertising
Many new businesses
fail to advertise properly. It wouldn’t occur to most business
owners that insufficient advertising might cause a problem
with keeping their business afloat, but during tough times,
advertising might be your best weapon.
When the economy
is running badly, you should have enough money put aside
to advertise special promotions and sales to your customers.
When you do advertise, you should try to be everywhere. You
want people to see your businesses name no matter where they
turn. Here are some of the ways that you can advertise to
ensure that you cannot be forgotten.
- Newspaper and
magazine ads
- Newspaper,
and direct mailbox inserts
- Flyers and
posts
- Commercial
and media ads
- Websites, complete
with online store
You should know
that these do not have to cost you an arm and a leg. Commercials
can be costly, but these others don’t have to be. Running
a website can be free or cheap, and the software to host
your own online store can also be cheap or free. You just
need someone that can keep track of orders for you.
Improper advertising
can leave the community not knowing that your business exists;
especially during hard times. You want to stay available
to all of your customers because if you disappear from view,
so will your customers.
Improper
book-keeping
It doesn’t matter
what you do to keep your business running at its best. If
you do not keep proper track of your money’s coming and goings,
you will eventually be left with none.
If it is at all
possible, do your own book keeping so that you know exactly
where your money is going. If you do not know much about
it, you should hire someone that does, but also someone that
you can trust. If you must, hire someone just to watch the
book keeper so that you don’t get ripped off.
As the business
owner, you need to know exactly how much money that your
business has. You should know exactly how much profit that
you are gaining each month so that you can use your money
wisely. It is not always easy to keep track of all of your
money, especially if you are generating a lot of business,
but it doesn’t have to be impossible.
Even with a good
book keeper, you should look into popular accounting software
like Quark Express and Microsoft Money because they do most
of the work for you. All you really have to do yourself is
add the right numbers and let the software add and subtract
for you.
Every year many
businesses go under due to bad book keeping. They spend money
they don’t have or they make errors processing payroll deposits.
Don’t let that happen to you.
Credit
Problems
The worst thing
that a business owner can do is to run it on too much credit.
Each day it gets easier and easier for new businesses to
gain credit accounts and credit cards from various companies.
All too often, these companies run up more credit than they
can repay.
It just goes to
say that you have to live and run your business within your
means. All too often business owners find themselves buying
things that the business simply doesn’t need. They also buy
things for themselves on company credit. This is a big no-no
in the business world.
Once a business
spends too much money on credit, they learn all too late
that the interest rates on credit cards can force hundreds
of extra dollars in expenses. New and small retail businesses
just can’t afford to pay them. There is also the fact that
over buying supplies and merchandise can be a far bigger
problem than businesses expect.
Over paying employees
can run any business into the ground if they are not keeping
up with their regular expenses properly. Any successfully
run business owner knows that you start off small, and hopefully
build your way up. That is impossible if you are living and
running your business above your means.
 
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