Seven Lethal Amusement Business Mistakes to Avoid
By Cliff Ennico, Entrepreneur.com
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When I go on vacation, I take a lot of books with me. I try to make sure that none of them have anything to do with business, but sometimes business lessons come from the strangest places. One of my vacation reads this year was "Famous Last Words" by Jonathan Green. This sometimes funny, frequently poignant compilation of deathbed quotations offers a glimpse at the characters of famous people as revealed by their final words. My favorite (as a business columnist, anyway) comes from showman P.T. Barnum, whose last words reportedly were "How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?"
Whatever words you may utter if your business collapses (most probably unprintable in this column), the failure can often be traced back to some "famous last words" you once said, if only to yourself. Here are some painful examples:
"My customers will be loyal to me." Ask any small town hardware store owner who's had to go one-on-one with WalMart or Home Depot if this is true. While not totally dead, customer and brand loyalties are not as strong as they used to be.
People won't buy stuff from you just because they've bought from you for 30 years. If a new competitor is offering a better price to your customers, and the cost of changing vendors isn't all that great (for example, if the cheaper competitor is located in a faraway, hard-to-reach place, people may continue to pay your higher prices for the convenience of a shorter trip), people will switch to the competitor in a heart beat. By all means provide better service than your competitors, but don't count on that to save you--you should also offer the lowest prices around and keep your costs even lower.
"If I offer people something they need, they'll buy it." Amazingly, people don't always buy what they need, even if they know they need it, and even if they tell you they need it. Example: Brussels sprouts. Probably one of the healthiest foods on the planet, what with all the vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants they contain. Heck, they probably even prevent cancer if you eat enough of them.
People are educated nowadays, and they're saturated with media telling them what foods are healthy for them to eat, so they know they need to eat more green vegetables. Nobody seriously disputes that. But when you're really hungry and you want something quickly, do Brussels sprouts come to mind? Too many entrepreneurs are out there selling Brussels sprouts to people because they need them, and know they need them, but are scarfing down chocolate-covered peanut butter-filled pretzels when nobody's looking.
"I really don't have to market, because if I do a good job, the word will get around." People don't talk much about the positive experiences they have with their professionals or service providers (but believe me, they talk long and hard about their negative experiences!). Also, people aren't staying in one place long enough to learn about local reputations. While your reputation is certainly important, it doesn't get new clients or customers in the room. In any business or profession, you have to get in people's faces and constantly communicate what you do, how you do it and why you're better than the competition, in a way that doesn't turn people off.
Next > "My business has no competition."
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