Breathing New Life into a Struggling Business: A How-To Guide

If your business has taken a downturn in recent months or years, then this doesn't have to mean that your business is doomed to fail. A struggling business is hard to accept, and it can often feel overwhelming. However, once you take a step back and change your perspective, you should find that you have the opportunity to revamp your business and rebuild it. This can lead to more success than you could have imagined. Let's get into it.

Why do Businesses Fail? 

Unfortunately, the majority of small businesses do tend to fail within the first decade of opening their doors. There are several things that can contribute to these statistics. Most small businesses tend to fail because of their finances; they lack the capital. Running a business is expensive between the payroll, rent, utilities and supplies. There are a lot of outgoings. During the first few years, cash flow is likely to be your biggest challenge, and you might not see substantial profits. This is why you need to know how to operate on slim margins. 

A lack of a clear business plan can also contribute to a business's failure. Having a solid business plan helps to provide a business with direction. This, in turn, allows you to develop strategies that are designed to help you to achieve these goals. It also allows you to identify issues and potential roadblocks, which you can then develop contingency plans for. A business plan can be created at any point during the operation of your business, so if you don't already have one, then it is never too late.  

Poor management can also often lead to failures and struggles for a business. A lot of entrepreneurs choose to go into business because they are passionate about the goods or services that they want to provide and not because they have a passion for management or HR. Without solid leadership, a business is likely to be mismanaged, which can mean trouble for the business.  

Finally, the last common cause of business failures is poor marketing. Failing to market your business properly means you reach fewer potential consumers, leading to fewer sales and less profit. Without knowing your consumers sufficiently, you cannot hope to market to them effectively. Marketing well is vital for the success and longevity of any business.  

Reassessing What Success Looks like for Your Business 

For a lot of business owners, success is very black-and-white. Either your business is successful, or it's not. However, this mindset could actually be damaging to your business; instead, you need to reassess what success could look like for you. There are a number of factors at play which can affect your success. The path to success is not necessarily straightforward, and this can be discouraging. Experiencing setbacks does not mean that your business is not successful or that it never will be successful. Learning from your mistakes is a success. Being adaptable to growth and change is a success. It is not always about the bottom line.  

Come Up with Goals 

After you have reframed your version of success, it is time to get started on turning your business around. Setting goals is one of the best ways to start. It helps to ensure that you have a focus, and this allows you to build and sustain some momentum. At this juncture, the goals should not be huge; they need to be achievable. Setting smaller goals means that they will be easier to achieve, and when designed well, they can help to build towards something bigger. It might even be advisable to partner with a business like 1ovmany, who can help you to come up with objectives and then develop plans that can help you to meet them.  

Identify the Cause of the Struggle 

It also makes sense to think about why the business is floundering. For the most part, it usually comes down to a lack of customers. Perhaps your business used to do well, but then the customers started to leave, or you had trouble securing consistent business. You need to do your best to work out why your business is struggling to secure new customers. This could be due to poor customer service, poor products or experiences or maybe your marketing efforts are ineffective or too aggressive. If you can't identify the cause by yourself, it might be worth implementing a customer feedback system to discover more about their experiences.  

Develop a Better Understanding of Your Target Audience 

Any business that does not have a clear view of its target audience is going to be ineffective when it comes to reaching them. You need to have an in-depth understanding of them. This knowledge then drives all of your marketing and branding efforts. What does your audience want? Are your products designed to appeal to them? Are you marketing effectively to them? These are all things that you need to think about.  

Analyse Your Finances 

Obviously, financial processes are important to the success of any business. Trouble with your finances, like an insufficient cash flow, debts or budgeting issues, can also contribute to a struggling business's chance of failure. Tracking your business's cash flow and catching financial problems as early as possible can help to ensure that your business remains profitable. If your business is having financial difficulties, then it might be worth thinking about how you can secure some working capital. You will need to establish a budget that maximises your cash flow. If you need to, you can do some research into your financing options. However, this is something that you will need to think about carefully because it could lead to debts in the future.  

Embrace Change 

Sometimes the best thing that you can do for your business is to pivot and come up with a new direction. This could mean reassessing and overhauling your business model, targeting a new market or even diversifying your goods or services. Carry out an in-depth analysis of your business to get a better idea of what is working and what isn't working. This can then inform your decisions regarding making changes to your business's approach.  

Prioritise Your Marketing Efforts 

Marketing will be integral to any future efforts made by your business. You should, ideally, have come up with a better idea of who your target audience is and how you can reach them. In order to reintroduce your business and turn it around, you really need to let your consumers or potential consumers know more about your business and why they should make a purchase from you. Think about how you can attract, engage and ensure repeat business. Obviously, your budget is important, but you can do a lot with a small budget with the right approach.  

The Takeaway 

In order to transform a floundering business and breath new life into it, you first need to learn from your failures. You need to be willing to make difficult decisions, whether this means downsizing or redundancies, until you can get the business back up and running. If you don't make any changes, the business is, of course, likely to fail. However, if you choose to implement the advice listed above, you are likely to be able to turn things around and achieve success.