August 20, 2019 Avoiding Business Pitfalls

How to avoid common business expansion pitfalls.

August 19, 2019

When it becomes clear that your business is growing and it’s time to expand, it’s important to understand that this is the point where many businesses meet their demise. Either they were unaware of the common business expansion pitfalls or chose to ignore them, thinking those didn’t pertain to what they are doing. Sadly, they did, as those owners and directors found out the hard way.

Learn from the Mistakes of Others

If you are at the point where expansion is on the horizon, it’s important to take time to understand how others before you failed, so that you don’t fall into the same trap. Understanding and learning from the mistakes of others is how you avoid them, but what are those pitfalls? Actually, there are several that eventually led to the failure of businesses large and small, with investment capital being the biggest issue by far.

Insufficient Funding

If you don’t have the necessary capital to expand, the best advice you can be given is to put a hold on that until you have the money necessary to take your project forward. Insufficient funding is the number one cause of business expansion failure, so that should be where you start! While it can be tedious and time-consuming finding lenders or investors willing to sink money into your business expansion, there is a simple way to overcome this issue: technology.

Inadequate Use of Technology Available

Check out the platform on https://www.become.co/ that literally matches your funding needs with lenders meeting that criteria. It is all based on advanced algorithms and within seconds, you can have thousands of options at your disposal. You have a dashboard you can access in real-time and as your funding needs change so, too, do your options. Time is money and with this kind of technology, you are not wasting time seeking funding which you could put to better use running your current operations and finalizing plans for expansion.

Failure to Organize a Leadership Team

Here is another common error many businesses make when expanding their operations. Whether adding a new site or providing new products or services, it takes a leadership team to ensure a smooth transition. However, many bosses are unwilling to take team leaders off their current projects because this will leave a void in current operations. This should have been thought out well in advance, so take the time to train trusted team members to take on leadership roles. Expansion means adding new team members, so as each one is trained to take on a leadership role, add a new hire to fill that void. This is paramount to your success.

These are just a few of the common pitfalls many businesses succumb to, but they are, by far, the ones that often lead to failure. Don’t fall prey to the same errors because most are easy to overcome. The only other concern is trying to bring your product or service where there is no market for what you have to offer. Do your research well, use technology to do the time-consuming legwork for you, and raise up a strong leadership team. With that as your backbone, expansion is finally on the horizon.

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