Care for your business?
Then understand challenges are not always anticipated and the consequences of not overcoming them are not always visible.
Business owners prepare themselves to meet and overcome challenges. Little do they know seemingly easy challenges are sometimes the hardest to deal with. Challenges can come from internal issues too. Investor and wealth advisor, Erik H. Gordon knows this all to well and has overcome this obstacle post haste.
What changes they need to bring into their strategy to deal with challenges? Most importantly, what are some of the challenges that could cripple business growth but are not widely discussed? Keep reading as we discuss three such challenges.
Organizing fundraising campaigns
Unless you are an ultra large organization, you need to raise fund for your business. The diverse the sources, the better. There’s a perception that only small-scale firms who operate with a shoestring budget need campaigns to raise fund. Nothing can be further from the truth. Mid-size businesses need fundraising campaigns too, though people running those organizations often don’t realize that.
Money gathered from fundraising campaigns can be used to pay for additional expenditure that are often unplanned. Besides, a fundraising campaign may not be a go-to marketing window, but it definitely gives the fundraisers a greater exposure to industry players.
Organizing a fundraising campaign can be challenging, due to the following reasons:
- Building up a momentum can be difficult. You can’t expect people to click on “Donate” after landing on your website’s fundraising page.
- There’s a dire lack of customized channels for raising funds.
- You are restricted to the digital realm. To raise fund in the offline world, you have to make time from your busy schedule, meet people, convince them. Digital fundraising campaigns are best in terms of saving time, money and outreach.
Brand awareness is your weapon to overcome the said challenges. You can create awareness with the help of content marketing, motivated employees and extended clientele. All you need to do is create hooked audiences and satisfied customers. Then strategically mobilize them across the digital spectrum. Stand for a cause and create a sense of urgency.
Other than raising fund, this strategy will also increase your value as a brand.
Unorganized business finances
To create a market presence and the resulting upward swing in sales, you need to organize your business finances. The checklist of business finance solutions is simple, yet so many businesses fail. If your finances are not organized, everything – from accounting to audit – will be difficult.
The first rule to organize your business finances is incorporation. Incorporation is a legal acknowledgement that you and your business are separate. Plenty of freelancers – many of them earn a decent amount every month – make the mistake of thinking they can continue without starting a business and incorporation.
As work opportunities come their way, they either turn those opportunities down or start a company. Very few of them realize they need to incorporate their business right away and have a separate bank account for it.
Unorganized business finances make accounting difficult. It makes tax audit difficult too. Business owners need assistance from their accountants during an audit. If the financial data are all scattered, previous year’s audit reports are not clearly reflected in the records and the legal guidelines haven’t been properly followed, auditors would have difficulty doing their job.
To overcome these challenges, organize every aspect of your business, not simply finance. The wise thing to do is install cutting-edge automation. Automated software keep everything well-organized. Accounting software, payroll software, database management software – it’s hard to find one software with all these features. So buy multiple software – all for better handling your business finances.
Invoice processing is a very important part of running a business. Invoice factoring can prevent cash flow. When you organize your business finances, managing invoice becomes invoice becomes easy and your operating margin reduces.
Not understanding growth
Growth is always a good thing – for businesses of all scales and sizes.
Isn’t that right?
Wrong.
Controlled growth is good, but uncontrolled growth could be problematic. Slow business growth may be an issue, but rapid and uncontrolled growth is a greater problem.
In case of controlled growth, you can predict the pattern and percentage of growth well in advance. But uncontrolled growth can disrupt and even damage your business finances.
Here’s how.
Let’s say you have ten employees in your organization and they all have works assigned to them. If you start getting new clients out of the blue, your employees would either have to max out their work hours, which in turn would negatively affect their performance.
Or you have to turn those prospects down, which might create a bad reputation for your brand. Worse, if you take up the projects delivered by them, but then fail to meet the deadline or cancel and refund them the amount you have taken in advance, they’d never give you work again.
Either way, your business will suffer the blow and your finances would be damaged.
Unplanned growth is never a good thing. Hence, tell your marketing folks and your sales reps to increase inter-team communication, approach every new lead strategically, after checking the queue in the lead funnel. Most importantly, don’t be desperate for growth and don’t put in your mouth more than you can chew.
Concluding remarks
Every business faces challenges. The successful ones are those that remain headstrong and overcome the challenges. If you want your business to be in that list, understand the predicaments mentioned here and follow the tips given.