Different answers from different experts:
- An accountant may suggest lack of cash flow.
- An angel investor or venture capitalist may suggest lack of funds.
- An advertising agency salesperson will definitely suggest lack of constant advertising.
- A finance expert may suggest issues with cost management.
- A social media guru may suggest that the company’s blog was the culprit.
- A management consultant will surely blame the management process.
- A staffing company spokesperson may question the quality of the workers.
I could go on but the point is that there will never be a universally accepted answer as to why products, services, companies and even professionals bum out.
Of course, failures can be attributed to many reasons but there seems one that keeps occurring time and time again: no business!
In other words, prospective buyers did not purchase the product or prospective clients never showed up.
A business can do well with a bad cash flow, low funds, lack of advertising, bad management, without even having a website let alone a blog and have the worst staff ever.
But find a company that does well without customers (or clients). I have been a business observer all my professional life and I still have to see, hear of or read about a company that stays in business with no customers.
This brings me to the point that while most professionals in the turnaround are quick to point out the various wrongdoings very few will fail to explain the lack of customers.
And no, “they did not advertise” is not an excuse. Google and Starbucks became big companies without shelling out a cent on advertising (I may be wrong about Starbucks but about Google, I am certain).
If your business is failing, if your product is not selling, if your career is not taking off or taking a dive, if your company is not gaining or is losing market share, you definitely have a marketing problem.
All those financial people and management experts cannot help you out because they just don’t know what’s going on which is fair enough because as a marketing advisor, I could not tell you how to reverse engineer a product to eventually manufacture it for cheaper.
Why is your business failing? If you have a reasonable amount of customers or clients or if your brand is widely popular among shoppers and yet the business is heading downhill, you may not have a marketing problem.
For the greater majority, you need a marketing person to help out with the turnaround strategy.
