Small Business Woes: How Many Times Do You Have To Prove Yourself?

Building up a business takes time and effort though, after a few years, you may think you have finally reached the point where you have established yourself and can rely on a steady stream of business from clients who know what you do and that you do it well.

However, one of the sad facts of business life is that the pace of change is relentless. There are many factors that can push you back to the starting line, having to prove yourself all over again. Here are some tips to help you spot when such trouble is on the horizon, so you can prepare for the effort it will take to prove yourself – once again!

The biggest driver of this change is when clients you have worked with on a considerable number of projects change jobs or leave the company. It’s not a given that the new incumbent in the position will believe what a great service you offer; worse than that, you may end up losing the organization as a client company altogether.

While you can’t totally prevent this impacting your business, you can take steps, long before it happens, to have the pieces in place to increase the likelihood that the new incumbent in your former client’s job might be willing to go on using your services. Whenever you work with a sole point of contact at a company, make sure you know who that person reports to, who some of the other parties are who use the results of your work, and have an understanding of all the buying influences, so that when your primary contact leaves, you at least have a network close at hand, people you can bring to meetings with the new incumbent. Sometimes, endorsements from such co-workers will reduce the amount of time you have to spend re-proving yourself with a company you have done business with for years.

Another trigger that can change things so you end up proving yourself all over again is when the organizations you have been dealing with are sold. Or wound down entirely. If your client company is sold, it may move far away from where you are based. Or the new purchaser of the company may just close the facility. In such cases, you will find yourself without clients and essentially back at the starting line, where you were when you first set up your business. There is little you can do to stop this change, but you can be aware that it is going to happen, so that long before the sale closes and you lose the client, you have stepped up your new business efforts enough to have replacement clients already on your roster.

The other driver of sending you back to the starting line is when markets change, so drastically, that you need to offer entirely new services from within your business. Once again, there is little you can do to control such evolution, but it will still thrust you back into the position of being a newbie, someone who must convince people to do business with you. The biggest impact here, even if you have been in business 15-20 years or more, is that for a new service, both established and new clients may only want to commit small budgets, initially, to try you out. This can have a very negative effect on your revenue levels and on covering your overheads, expenses and payroll, if you have staff.

One of the ways to help offset the impact of large-scale market change, it is to make sure that you maintain a high-profile by taking part in industry events or taking on roles in professional and trade associations. By having a high enough profile, you will likely have established enough trust among your colleagues that transitioning to the provision of new services with both organizations who know you and those who weren’t clients before can be smoother and put you out in front of the starting gate, especially if those colleagues can speak as references for you.

For a business owner facing this challenge – and it can be discouraging to have to continually prove yourself – knowing the situation can develop and having identified steps to take to ease the transition, means the re-proving will be smoother and less stressful.

Copyright Deborah C. Sawyer

Deborah C. Sawyer is President of Information Plus and the author or editor of several books. Her latest is Other People’s Problems: Why You Need To Go On Interviewing Your Employees – After You Hire Them!, available via http://deborahcsawyer.com/shopsite_sc/page2.html. In this book, Deborah shares the wisdom she and other entrepreneurs have gained over a close to 30 year period. Any new business owner, armed with the insight in this book, can ramp up to speed, overnight, on the thorny issue of hiring!

You can also follow Deborah on her blog at http://otherpeoplesproblems-atworkatwork.blogspot.com while she may be reached via 212/355-2205.