New business consistency.
Starting a business can be daunting for many reasons, but one of the main challenges is being consistent with your business approach. Maintaining client volume, quality production, cash flow and marketing efforts all require a certain degree of consistency that can be daunting for new business owners.
Likewise, market fluctuations are a constant influence on the cost-effectiveness of all aspects of running a business, from buying to producing and marketing.
While the temptation may be to accommodate the ebb and flow of business, maintaining consistent work habits and production goals can pay dividends down the road when it comes to growth opportunities. Below are 5 reasons you should be consistent and how they can help your long-term business growth.
Practice makes perfect
Owning and operating any business venture, from freelance writing to baked goods and international courier services, starts out as an idea that morphs into a habit and then a lifestyle.
Like any endeavor that requires some degree of skill and commitment, practice makes perfect. While the temptation may be to allocate a certain amount of time to producing your designated goods and services, constant tinkering and production lead to payoffs.
When you’re constantly producing something, whether it be articles, cupcakes, or packaged deliveries, you gain a great understanding of what clients demand, how competitors respond, and what kind of production challenges might arise.
Although market volume is unpredictable, you can gain a greater appreciation of certain market motivators, such as seasonal shopping habits or how sales and bulk orders affect purchasing decisions.
Ultimately, when you’re constantly producing, you gain different ideas about what you can do differently and what else you can produce, which can expand your portfolio and increase the appeal of your business.
You never know what will work
Markets are inherently predictable. Ask any pharmaceutical, candy, or even vehicle manufacturer and you will quickly realize that not every idea leads to a revolutionizing purchasing craze; amazingly, it is an across-the-board phenomenon that 95% of new products fail in their first year.
The trouble is that, even with sufficient research and development, changing market motivators or other unpredictable economic influencers (like a pandemic!) can drastically alter how customers respond to your products.
When you are constantly trying to produce new or improved products or services, you give yourself and your clients the opportunity to try something new and see what works.
Trial and error may not be the most reassuring means of validating one’s production goals, but it can often be the final determinant to see what cakes sell or what shirt designs are in demand.
If you only stick with a limited production volume or inventory, you may be depriving yourself of generating new clientele who might be interested in something else you can offer.
Better assurance to creditors and potential clients
One of the challenges inherent to growing a business is dealing with funding. Investors prefer to see an established company with demonstrated results in order to justify future funding (this, of course, is a great challenge for any start-up trying to raise funding).
While you may not necessarily have a proven track record when you start out, if you have a limited portfolio or inventory that hasn’t necessarily reaped returns, you may be limiting yourself with regard to future investment opportunities.
Constantly generating new products and services or refining what you have gives investors different options with regard to future funding decisions, and you may even generate some suggestions on what could work to generate more revenue!
Likewise, potential clients, especially those in business-to-business ventures, want to see that you have the capacity to accommodate their production or purchasing goals.
With a greater inventory or portfolio, you have the opportunity to demonstrate that you are flexible and capable of working with different production or design goals, which helps to generate more clientele, leading to more revenue and increased production.
Essentially, it’s a process that builds on itself with regard to designing leading to increased production.
Better value for initial capital investments
Depending on the type of business you are operating, certain equipment needs to be used consistently in order to generate sufficient returns as well as to justify purchasing that equipment.
Unless you’re a construction contractor renting heavy equipment, or anyone renting heavy equipment, most equipment is subject to depreciation that increases when there is a lag time.
Although you can write off depreciation-related expenses depending on how long you’ve owned the equipment and how much it has depreciated, it doesn’t do you any good to purchase equipment and let it sit around (especially if it rusts!).
While manufacturing, delivery, and maintenance expenses factor into production overall, maintaining a baseline level of production, or at least monitoring equipment, during lag times can prevent equipment from wearing out simply from sitting around, leading to costly replacement expenses.
Aids with troubleshooting down the road
Similar to previous considerations, consistent production allows all business owners to identify what works in their production process and timetable.
Scheduling, purchasing inventory, equipment preventative maintenance, and product launches all require a certain level of preparation and refinement.
When you are minimally engaged in these processes, you may be selling yourself short on the potential production levels you could achieve and what potential problems might occur when the business picks up or expands.
When you are constantly troubleshooting your business strategy, you make a production that much more efficient while also gaining insights into how to prevent problems from repeating.
Among the considerations that influence production levels is fatigue. The goal with consistent production is not to work until exhaustion but to be consistent.
Creating a schedule, with sufficient downtime, engaging in appropriate training and networking opportunities, and being realistic about production goals relative to market indicators and influences creates a more robust production pipeline that anticipates challenges that may arise later, allowing for greater adaptability and efficiency. Ultimately, when it comes to succeeding in business, consistency is key.
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