5 Small Business Weaknesses That Can Be Turned Into Strength

Three years ago, when I left my corporate job in pursuit of running a start-up, no one thought I would succeed. After launching and scaling my business, I successfully changed the perception. From getting my first order to hitting the first millions, I realized that small weaknesses could become big wins.

How?

This is a million-dollar question that I am going to address in this article. Keep reading as I mention my trade secrets and simple ways I turned challenges into opportunities.

·   Customer Service for Marketing

A big company or big brand means having a huge clientele. When you receive 5000 orders every day, customers become a number. So, keeping track of every customer and offering a personalized interaction is nearly impossible.

This is where small companies outshine their relatively big competitors. In this race, setting a benchmark is very important. You can learn from big companies, replicate their customer service protocols, and then customize it for your business.

For instance, when I started my business, my benchmark was Optimum servicio al cliente en español, who not only provide customer service in Spanish, but are also available 24/7 to their users. This helped my business market as a customer-centric brand. With regular interaction and continuous feedback, my customers turned into loyal advocates.

Now, old customers refer nearly 25% of our new customers. This has helped us, slash the overall marketing budget by 20% and invest it in other places like product development and manufacturing.

·   Innovation First

Large businesses have more money, more people, and better policies but as the business and team grow, miscommunication also grows. Departments are divided and each department is further divided into teams. So when there is a new idea, it has to climb the hierarchical ladder.

In most cases, the idea dies down at the initial level and even if the idea does get to the management, it loses its significance. This is where small businesses outsmart big business. Small businesses have ambitious teams and an innovative-first rule.

When an idea is pitched, it usually gets to the higher management right away. With just a few more steps, it is executed. For instance, when I started my business, I had only 10 employees only. The ideas were pitched in front of everyone. Every team member had a voting right and within 2 hours, we would sit together and make a road plan.

This is a life-changing opportunity that most small businesses neglect. When put to use, small businesses can come up with the best and most innovative products!

·   Nothing to Lose

It is a general misconception that big companies have a higher tolerance of risk. They have developed a good financial cushion that works as a sandbox and eventually, when an idea fails, they do not have to face the repercussions.

However, when it’s a running project, they have too much to lose. Because these projects include stakeholders and, an internal and external auditor team. They might have a big financial backup but they are too afraid to lose it all.

As a small business, you have nothing to lose. You can execute any new idea without fearing failure. The financial setback can be huge but innovation will set you apart from others.

For instance, Facebook was built on an ambitious idea of keeping the world connected. Today, this social media platform is a billion-dollar ideacompany but it has no other winning idea. Instead, Facebook is busy perfecting poorly executed ideas by other companies.

·   Know It All

As a smart business owner, you have been through all. You have experienced everything and you have done it all. One minute you are a designer crafting a design, the next minute you are a customer support agent tackling your customer.

Wearing multiple hats means, you know each task and its requirements. You know the grassroots-level issues and as a boss, you can address these issues right away. As the business scales, you will not be setting any unrealistic goals.

For instance, in most companies, success is gauged by numbers. Any out of the box idea that fails to bring numbers is shunned in these companies. This creates friction between different departments, creating a lot of roadblocks.

On the contrary, when you know each task at grassroots level, creating harmony is quite easy.

·   Learn, Unlearn, and Relearn

Learning, unlearning, and relearning are the principles of evolution. If you do not unlearn and relearn, you eventually become outdated or worse, fail completely.

For small businesses, the process of unlearning and relearning requires very little time. Eventually, the pace of improvement is much better. On the other hand, the evolution process of big business takes a lot of time. There is a lot of retaliation, friction, and red-tapping involved.

Once a large company with more than 41% (2007) of market shares, Nokia is a great example of failing to adapt to the trends and newer technologies. Nokia failed to unlearn and relearn which eventually drove it out of business. On the contrary, a small company at the time, Samsung paved the way by learning, unlearning, and relearning. Today, Samsung has become a billion-dollar business.

Key Takeaways

For small businesses, turning things around is very easy. Here are some key takeaways for small businesses:

  • Be the first one to execute ideas
  • Having fewer people mean less friction and faster execution of any idea
  • Every process has an expiry date, reinvent yourself with better ideas
  • Set a big, successful company as your benchmark but look for ways to outsmart them
  • Being ambitious is the biggest strength of any business

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