This wasn’t supposed to happen to you. When you started your business, you thought of all the great and fun ways you could make money while serving a group, or certain groups, of customers.

“If you never know failure, you will never know success.”– Legendary boxer Sugar Ray Leonard

But now you’re seeing signs that things aren’t going well. Maybe you don’t have as many sales as you wanted, or maybe you aren’t making as much money as you hoped. What should you do if your small business is struggling?

Here are three powerful tips that can help your business succeed:

1. Examine your beliefs.

Sure, dreams without actions are just wishes. But truly believing you can save your business will motivate you to take the steps needed to turn things around and help grow your business. Anything can become a success, and any success can become a failure; the difference is a positive attitude paired with hard work and careful thinking. Much of the time a business is struggling because of some assumption about what would work, an assumption that doesn’t prove to be true. Maybe just a little tweak to how you do things is all your business needs.

2. Get to know your ideal customer.

Who are you selling to? Do you understand what they really want? Do you understand the best way to reach them or to convince them to buy from you? You might be just one social media poll or survey away from success.

Think about your past and current customers. Do your current products or services deal with a problem or give a result that’s important to your customers? It’s okay if you can’t answer this question now.

Talk to even one or two of your customers in person if you can. Ask your customers questions on social media about what they like and/or dislike about your products or services, or about items similar to yours.

Use your customers’ answers and consider making changes to your products or services.

3. Get organized.

Being organized may not feel exciting. But every business needs to be organized.

Take a look at how you track (or don’t track) your business’ income, the number of sales (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.), your number of customers, your repeat customers, and other parts of your business.

You can use Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, and similar spreadsheet apps to help you look at important numbers that affect your business.

And knowing these numbers can help you see what specific changes your business needs.

Final Takeaways

It may be hard to believe, but having a failing business does not make you a failure.

Many businesses have successes and failures.

If your small business is struggling, remember to:

  • Examine your beliefs about how your business works.
  • Talk to your customers for ideas to improve your business.
  • Organize your business.

Finally, remember the quote in the image at the start of this post from someone who clearly dealt with painful losses on his way to success.

Photo by the blowup on Unsplash