Interesting reading....certainly I can relate to a number of these mistakes. The mistakes are in numerical order with the most common mistake made by owner of small and medium enterprises is taking on the wrong person for the job...oops..been there, done that and got the polo shirt :-(
Top 10 SME business mistakes:
- Hiring the wrong person for the job
- Failing to take advantage of an opportunity
- Giving too great a discount
- Taking on a friend to work for you
- Taking on a relative on to work for you
- Making a mistake by firing someone
- Trusting a business partner that didn’t work out
- Investing in equipment that didn’t work
VW commissioned the report as part of its push of commercial vans into the SME sector and reports:
“Running a business isn’t easy and having the best staff working for you is critical, so training and investing in people will always pay dividends in the future,” states Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles director Alex Smith. “Even successful business owners will have made a mistake at some point. The key thing is to avoid repeating them.”
Original article : Business Vans
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I imagine that we have all made some clangers throughout our business careers. On the flipside the painful lessons are often the most valuable ones.
When I started London Stone I had moved down to London from Stoke On Trent. Back then (2006) the Yellow pages was still a succesful way of advertising in Stoke On Trent and me and my business partners stupidly asssumed that it would be the same in London. Without doing any research we invested significantly in a yellow pages and yell.com campaign. It was a complete waste of money and the ROI was non existant, but we did learn a big lesson, dont advertise in the yellow pages :)))
Seriously though the mistake we made was that we were lazy and we just asssumed that the yellow pages would work for us. In reality if we had done our homework we would have found that the yellow pages even in 2006 was becoming an oudated form of advertising in London
Has anyone done all ten? I have to hold my hands up to nine of them, although most were in a different industry.
I have done them all Paul apart from number 7. Generally the right person for the job does not get themselves into a situation to be fired
It's number 7 that I've never fallen in to as well. Maybe one of the easier ones to avoid.
Steve - are you saying it's a mistake to take on relatives? Should I tidy up my CV?? ;)
Just to clarify for everybody, Rebecca is my sister as well as being the manager of our West London Showroom. The general consensus as I have always known it is that you dont mix business and pleasure and I suppose that would cover family and friends. Its certainly not a 1 size fits all though and in our case having Becs managing our West London showroom has been a positive thing for London Stone. I have also had negative experiences in the past though when employing friends, so it can definately go both ways
I think the "employing relatives" point might be more taking on the family loser? The brother-in-law who can't find any other job, the cousin who's been sacked yet again?
Family businesses are amongst the strongest you'll ever find.