{"id":989,"date":"2018-07-02T21:07:17","date_gmt":"2018-07-02T21:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/?p=989"},"modified":"2018-07-05T02:18:17","modified_gmt":"2018-07-05T02:18:17","slug":"heres-why-most-business-people-either-fail-in-business-or-fail-to-realise-the-full-potential-of-their-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/rwc-blog\/heres-why-most-business-people-either-fail-in-business-or-fail-to-realise-the-full-potential-of-their-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Here&#8217;s Why Most Business People Either Fail In Business Or Fail to Realise the Full Potential of Their Business"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">I&#8217;ve resisted talking about this topic for now, but having seen a very well written article by Sam Ovens this morning containing a similar vein of thought Sam&#8217;s article has inspired me to get on and put these messages out in the business community.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Sam is 100 % correct in saying that <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>people don&#8217;t care about other people&#8217;s problems &#8211; they only care about solving their own problems<\/strong><\/span>. <strong>This is a truism that too many business people still deny and still don&#8217;t understand&#8230;and is a major causation factor leading to the failure of many many businesses right around the world.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Way back in the 1980&#8217;s during my introduction to marketing at university by a worldly lecturer by the name of Richard Buchanan, I was presented with the notion that <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">the underlying motivation of ALL human behaviour is in fact &#8220;selfishness&#8221;<\/span><\/strong>. Think about this principle for a minute even and you&#8217;ll see how true it is. And once you accept this basic universal trait of human behaviour you&#8217;ll then be able to move forward and truly understand the power of marketing &#8211; which of course is centered on identifying and resolving the needs (problems) of people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">You see, <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">a human need is no more and no less than a &#8220;problem that needs resolving&#8221;<\/span><\/strong>, and if you are able to resolve another person&#8217;s problem you become recognised as having added value to their life &#8211; and you start to become seen as their &#8220;problem-solver&#8221;. And if you do the job of solving another person&#8217;s problem well enough that person is likely to return to you to have not only similar problems of theirs solved in the future (e.g. buy similar products\/ services from you)&#8230;but quite possibly engage you to have &#8220;new&#8221; problems of theirs addressed also.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">When I teach commerce &#8211; whether that be at a student level or to experienced business people &#8211; the fundamental &#8220;truth seed&#8221; that I plant in their minds is &#8220;<strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">your income in life will mostly be commensurate with the extent to which you succeed at satisfying the needs (solving the problems) of other people<\/span><\/strong>&#8220;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">What continues to both bemuse and annoy me is business people who have an inwards focus on their business. Have no doubt about it, such a focus is all about &#8220;ego&#8221;, and in my experience ego is continuing to cause many businesses to fail.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">I liken this tendency to drive a business with an inwards-focused mindset to a person taking &#8220;selfies&#8221; on their digital device, versus a person using the same digital device to instead take pictures of the world around them. If a person is constantly concerned about themselves more than taking in a greater snapshot of the world around them, you can count on such a person:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">being ego-centric<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">having a mind-set of &#8220;I know what&#8217;s best&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">having an attitude of &#8220;I&#8217;m right and you&#8217;re wrong&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">being relatively difficult to influence\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">being quite opinionated\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">not readily being able to work with other people<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">&#8230;and unfortunately &#8211; in a business context &#8211; these people are more concerned about propelling their own careers than developing the interests of the stakeholders who they should be looking after. I have worked in a CEO role alongside directors who had this &#8220;we know what&#8217;s best for our business&#8230;and we know what our customers want&#8221; mindset. They refused to validate their assumptions\/ speculations using market research and refused to evolve to become a marketing-led organisation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">So here&#8217;s the take-home point,<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong> if you are serious about having a viable and sustainable business then you must relax your ego and tendency to looks inwards to resolve customer-related issues, and instead look outwards, engage with customers and be prepared to shape your value proposition based on what customers are telling you their problem is that requires resolving.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">And if you want to take practicing this &#8220;outward-looking&#8221; discipline one step further, engage with your team of employees and at least your primary external stakeholders (such as preferred suppliers) to establish first-hand what their needs\/ problems in relation to your business are also.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Your business will flourish when the needs\/ problems of your various stakeholders (customers, employees, contractors, suppliers) are being resolved by the products\/ services that your business provides. You can&#8217;t hope to achieve this synergy until you actually &#8220;<strong>know<\/strong>&#8221; what these needs\/ problems are and then become disciplined about focusing the resources of your business on addressing these identified problems\/ needs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Click <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/samovensfan\/posts\/2122435697996499\">here<\/a> to read Sam&#8217;s article.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve resisted talking about this topic for now, but having seen a very well written article by Sam Ovens this morning containing a similar vein of thought Sam&#8217;s article has inspired me to get on and put these messages out in the business community. Sam is 100 % correct in saying that people don&#8217;t care about other people&#8217;s problems &#8211; they only care about solving their own problems. This is a truism that too many business people still deny and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=989"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":997,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions\/997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}