Every business craves more sales. By looking for more customers, collaborating with new distributors, and adding fresh products or services to their portfolio. However, every action taken poses a risk and the potential to make things worse. Poorly thought out decisions or being blinded by the desire for profit can lead to ignoring or tolerating negative consequences. Increase the chance of success, not only by proper planning but also by avoiding making mistakes.
I do not add to my troubles. — Paconius Agrippinus
If you dissect a trivial example of retail flow into pieces, it may look like this: you buy a product from a distributor, you promote it, you sell it, and you ship it.
In this particular oversimplified scenario, there are a few things happening in the background, such as:
- buying a product from a distributor (or creating one yourself) without testing before making a sale,
- if it sells, there may be limited stock from the distributor, cutting off future sales and forcing you to start again with something else,
- you ship it, but the customer receives damaged goods.
Every business is different, but the same issues occur in most of them.
There are many things that can go wrong, many of which can be avoided simply by planning a few steps ahead.
- Why would you buy in bulk before properly testing its saleability and quality?
- Why sell products that have a high rate of returns, such as being damaged, unfitting, or limited to professionals?
- Why would you hire an extra employee just because you have to process more orders during peak seasons?
All of our ideas may seem amazing until they encounter problems. While you cannot completely avoid them, you do not have to create them either.
Why sell products that are prone to returns?
If your business project, for example, is a resale, try avoiding products that are fragile to ship (like glass), outdated, seasonal, fashion-sensitive (people are too picky), food with a short shelf life, limited by legislation, uses or applications, etc.
Make your life easier by choosing products that are easier to handle, pack, ship, and store. This means fewer returns, fewer emails and phone calls, fewer negative reviews, and so on. If you have troubling products in your portfolio, find a way to replace them.
Why do you cooperate with problematic companies?
Most businesses depend on producers or distributors, and nothing is more frustrating than a lack of professionalism. Missing invoices, postponed cargo, damaged goods, inconsistent quality, etc. All that adds to your problems and disrupt the flow within your company. You have to reschedule, reorganize tasks, put many things on hold, and explain pending orders to your customers.
If you believe this will change with this or that particular business, it won’t. It has happened so many times that it becomes a pattern. You can find another one. Perhaps sacrificing a bit higher price but improving many aspects of trade is a win. There is always another solution, a different way. If you don’t change it, in a year, you may be in the same (or worse) position.
Why would you hire incompetent employees?
So you are in the position when you think you need an extra hand in your company. In a rush with too much work to do, you hire one and are willing to compromise on the new employee’s lack of competence. Mistakes such as impatience, lack of a clear description of a particular position, fear, or greed for paying for high-quality work are what most businesses do. And they pay for it by becoming average, uninteresting, unable to lead, and always spinning in circles with internal difficulties. By the way, is a new employee really necessary?
Filter your decisions by asking yourself:
- Does it have a long-term advantage?
- Do I really need to do this?
- What is the pattern of that person or business?
- What is the alternative? (Instead of “Is there any alternative?”)
- Does this decision bring the company closer to its goal or further away?
The ability to predict and make difficult decisions gives you a fluid flow and the ability to focus - to truly dedicate your attention to things that matter, that improve your business, your products, and your growth.
Conclusion
Ignoring or tolerating unnecessary discrepancies may work for a while. At the beginning, you have no choice but to work with problematic distributors, inefficient employees, and low-quality products. This is something you can influence. Many of it comes from experience. The lesson is to learn from the experience and not to make the same mistakes twice. To see long-term advantages instead of momentary ones. Try to think like a chess player, calculating a few moves ahead saves a lot of trouble.