As a business person, no matter how smart and
prudent you are, sometimes you still lose money. Some decisions you take or
don’t take can make you lose money or cause you to miss out on some
opportunities to make money. Either way, costs result which could drain your profits.
Discover here some avenues through which some of these losses can occur and how
you can prevent them from hurting your business.
Rejecting Credit Cards as a Form of Payment
Many small business owners reject credit cards as a
form of payment because they either want to avoid fraud or to dodge fees that
are associated with accepting credit card payments. That is not a very smart
thing to do because these days global business trends favor the use of credit
cards for convenience and ease of payments. Invariably, your business may be
losing customers and money if you reject Credit Cards as a form of payment.
Finding a way around your fears is what works best when it comes to accepting
any payment methods, credits cards inclusive, for your business.
Not Taking Full Advantage of the Internet
No matter how many books you have read, nothing
beats the Internet where you can easily take advantage of free and affordable
content. Books could be of help, Mentors too are helpful but learning from the
Internet is most cost-effective and convenient. Before the internet and social
media, people only had access to others through work, face-to-face, or perhaps,
someone they met at a business conference. These contacts can be limiting and
there is no guarantee that they would help you in any way. Today, there are so
many ways to learn from people no matter how far away they live or how
successful they are for little to no money. Many thanks to the Internet and
Social Media! You could be losing out on information flow and by implication money
if you are not taking full advantage of the Internet to get useful content from
blogs and social media profiles of experts in various fields.
Focusing too much on the Big Picture
Even if you lay out a big plan for your business, it
pays to start small then build up. When new entrepreneurs overly focus more on
long-term goals, they tend to lose sight of the simple things they need to do
to grow their business steadily. They strategically neglect the fact that it is
the little things which you do well which tend to add up to big things in
summation. Focusing more on the short-term actually helps you in the long run.
You lose money and focus when you do otherwise.
Unknowingly Shortchanging Yourself
If you run a service business, the cost of your time
is where you make money. As such, one very good way to guard against losing
money is to protect your time. If you have already made allowance of time to
render a service, stick with it. If however you have cause to do extra time
because of client requests, be sure they pay for it otherwise you will be
shortchanging yourself. You lose money when clients start asking you to do more
work than expected outside of the agreement without compensation.