Elon Musk has said that life has to be about more than just “solving problems.” There also have to be inspirational things that give people a reason to get up in the morning. But if you’re a small business, focusing on inspiration seems like a lofty dream. You’ve got problems galore, and they need to be dealt with first.
Here are some of the big problems that all businesses must face to be successful.
Keeping Pace With Demand
As a business, being rushed off your feet is a nice problem to have. But it can also create a lot of problems. A children’s daycare company called Harold McMillan from New Orleans realized the problems that rapid expansion could cause after Hurricane Katrina. Following the storm, the majority of day care companies left the city. As a result, Harold McMillan found its order books full to bursting, and it got an influx of demand from parents looking for a place to leave their children while they went to work. The company quickly filled its current 200-child capacity building and immediately had to start looking for additional space.
Identifying Who The Buyers Are
Another common problem businesses face is identifying who exactly their customers are. Kehinde Olajide, the CEO of a natural beverage company, says that he has found it difficult to “crack the code” of identifying customers. There might be many customers who tick all the right demographic boxes, he says, but that doesn’t mean that they’re interested in his particular product.
The problem for Olajide is that poorly targeted marketing is very expensive. Finding out exactly who your customers are is, therefore, vital.
Transitioning IT Systems
As businesses get bigger, their IT needs become more sophisticated. Not only do they have to manage additional user login accounts, but they also have to integrate an increasingly diverse product stack into their daily operations. As sites like https://www.itworks.us.com/ make clear, doing this is far from easy. Legacy systems rarely work well alongside new computing services.
For this reason, the vast majority of new startups are ditching legacy software completely in favor of managed cloud services. These services run day and night, usually without a hiccup, meaning less downtime for business.
Getting Paid On Time
Getting paid is what business is all about. However, for many companies, getting paid on time is a problem. Thanks to a weak economy, many customers and B2B firms can be late to pay, and this can wreak havoc with cash flow. This is a problem that Jennifer Brown faced, according to http://www.businessnewsdaily.com. Her coffee supplier firm started to get into trouble when a number of her large, corporate clients were unable to pay her for her services. Payments were delaying, and so Brown had to get loans to cover the difference.
Receiving A Fair Price
Finally, there’s the problem of getting a fair price for what you sell. In very competitive markets, it can be a challenge to keep prices high enough to justify the continuation of the business.
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