Small businesses are the lifeline of many Americans, creating millions of jobs and supporting large corporations in various ways. According to JPMorgan Chase Institute, 99% of America’s firms are small businesses. Out of these, 88% employ less than 20 employees, with 80% being non-employer businesses.
The Small Business Administration reports small businesses employ 1.5 million people annually, accounting for 64% of all jobs created in America. For a small business owner, every day is a struggle to stay afloat while looking for innovative ways to grow and deliver value to their customers.
The statistics on small business failure make for shocking reading. According to Convergehub, over 50% of small businesses fail in the first year of their operations. While a whopping 95% fail within the first five years. In this article, Elijah Norton shares some insights to help small business owners take their businesses to the next level of growth and increasing profit.
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Know Your Customer and Anticipate their Needs
Customers are the lifeblood of any business, more so a small business with a tiny bit of market footprint. Elijah Norton’s customer philosophy is simple; without customers, we have no business. As a small business owner, you need to know and understand your customers to develop products and services that resonate with them.
According to a 2019 report by CB Insights, 42% of small businesses fail because of a lack of market demand. Knowing what your customer wants is an effective way of serving them exactly that and meeting their desires.
Customer needs are constantly evolving. What a customer needs today may differ vastly from what they want tomorrow. As a small business owner, keeping tabs on changing customer needs is as important as ever. This is because the internet has made it far easier for customers to look up alternatives at the click of a button. If you cannot anticipate customer needs, someone else will, and your customers will go to them.
Conducting customer surveys is an effective way of knowing what your customers’ needs are today in the future. Implement simple ways of capturing customer feedback and use this information to produce new products and services. Asking for feedback from your customers also shows that you genuinely care about how they feel. However, asking for feedback and stopping at that may backfire on your business if customers don’t notice any difference in how you meet their needs.
Be Innovative and Invest in Tech
Innovation is a never-ending endeavor for small businesses as it enables them to stay ahead of the curve. Elijah Norton knows this all too well. He started Veritas Global Protection, which offers vehicle protection. Elijah Norton has found new and better ways of meeting customer needs.
The modern customer is sophisticated and complex. This means that a business owner who fails to innovate will eventually lose to the competition. Innovation allows a business owner to stay in touch with trending issues in business and come up with practical approaches to surviving the cutthroat competition in the business world today.
Technology is an essential component for every business today. Technology allows a business to cut costs of reaching customers and scale faster. The initial investment may be substantial, but the cost savings pay off in the long run.
Small business owners can take advantage of free resources, such as open-source software, for tasks such as accounting, hiring, and employee management. Elijah Norton places much emphasis on the twin concepts of innovation and technology, noting you can’t have one without the other. He observes that technology has enabled Veritas Global Protection to run its activities to meet customer needs, improve customer experience and boost company-wide operations.
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Patience Pays
Starting and growing a business takes time. It’s never an overnight success. A common mistake that business owners make is to delude themselves into hitting the jackpot in a few months. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Building a successful business requires a great deal of ingenuity but even higher doses of patience. Take the example of Elijah Norton. He started Veritas Global protection in 2011 with just two employees, and it took him three years to enjoy the first taste of benefits. Today, Elijah Norton companies rake in revenues upwards of $75 million annually, with Veritas employing over 50 people and generating a revenue of $50 million annually.
If he had been impatient, Elijah Norton could have folded up and moved on to other ventures, still with no guarantee of success.
One understated fact of growing a small business is learning from mistakes and building on success. Mistakes are bound to happen when running a business. However, Elijah Norton Phoenix has something to say about mistakes in business. He perceives mistakes as key learning points that enable a business owner to get better for the future.
Failing doesn’t mean that running a business is not for you. Picking the lessons from failure distinguishes a successful business owner from the crowd.
Elijah Norton’s Last Word to Every Small Business Owner
For every small business owner out there, Elijah Norton insists on the need to know how to lead and manage people. Leadership is an essential aspect of every business, whether a small business or a large conglomerate.
A skilled leader knows how to build a reliable team, keep their followers happy, and adjust their relationships accordingly. A business owner also needs to identify solutions to business problems to give their business a fighting chance in the world today.
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