I met a young businessperson some years back and asked him what was his greatest challenge in business. Dude went ahead and said marketing. He was with no doubt on the right track but at a profound dimension, it isn’t marketing but…
But what? Competition!
Many years ago, an Austrian-born American management consultant, author, and the popular “founder of modern management,” Peter Drucker cited that “Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.” Business can be challenging when paddled with a quack marketing but nonetheless, competition is a greater challenge.
Envision that you are the main advertiser on the web or you are the only one publicizing your products online. Regardless of your showcasing approach and expertise, you will have your audience and always gain people’s attention. Marketing becomes a problem due to the fact that the computerized world has become a hybrid civilization of interdependent economy with millions of small businesses springing up daily and billions of entrepreneurs finding common ground. Everyone wants to be known and recognized, and this quest to gain an abiding relevance and popularity on the web led to an eternal struggle of endless competition.
With billions of potential businesses competing against yours, you will want to figure out a way to outperform your rivals. That’s why your business either has to be competitive or anticompetitive in nature. If your business is competitive, you have to make use of good business intelligence and employ all forms of strategy such as competitive strategy and amp; customer retention strategy, and sometimes based on your competition on price factor and customers relationship management. But if your business is anticompetitive, you provide rare value and amazing qualities are already crafted at the core of your products. You wouldn’t have to compete on prices because you already provide values like no one else have done. Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft are the most suitable example of befitting companies. With a smartphone and a laptop costing over $1000+, people will still cue on ground competing to buy. Meaning that if your business is anticompetitive, your customers will do the competition for you irrespective of the price attached.
My greatest challenge at the moment is payment on delivery model. Some customers are messing it up. Am a shirt seller and it’s a unit item. What you are interested in, another customer may be interested in it as well, whereas yours is on the way to be delivered to you already and we told the new customer that the shirt has been sold. Unfortunately, you weren’t at home or phone number wasn’t going when they delivery person gets to customer address. Delivery person will have to bring it back and we can’t tell the new customer that it’s available again. Working on how to stop it very soon. Will be payment before delivery. May God bless our hustles. Entrepreneur isn’t easy though but it’s interesting and you only survive with a none giving up spirit. Remember, it takes a lion heart to have a lion share.
Having 24/7 power supply was my biggest challenge as an entrepreneur, I was able to solve that using a portable inverter and solar system for my laptop…..I dropship tech products and accessories on foreign platforms hence I need to be online always to attend to orders, also identifying quality products for my store, identifying unique products that will sell well , selling with the wrong price is also a major challenge for me.
Breaking even. If you’re not careful, you might run a business for a year or two without making profit or loss. You will just be pushing it until a breakthrough comes your way.
Funniest part is you can’t afford to quit at that point, cos if you do… To start all over again would be almost impossible.
Just have another steady source of income.
My greatest challenge is electricity.
To write a book (KDP) or do freelance jobs (Fiverr & Up work), I need a very conducive, well-lit, environment. I spend roughly N700 daily on petrol for gen to power my home office.
Electricity is very important. Sadly, the Nigerian government doesn’t want to do anything about it. We gained Independence in 1960. It’s been 59 long years and Nigeria cannot boast of 24-hour electricity.
Getting finance is the biggest challenge faced by an entrepreneur
Rendering services to clients at a cheap price just to help them and they still keep trying to haggle prices. The dearth of reliable people to work with, there’s so much dishonesty out there.
There are certain dependencies that can make or break an entrepreneur, a lot of people think that there is a secret to success as an entrepreneur. Research has shown that there is no one path. This why I like the book “ Foreignpreneur; the 9 dependencies of success “ you can understand more about the most important challenges that you need to be aware, to build a successful business
As a Digital Marketer, many times, I have to bring my price down to satisfy clients. People look down on small brands. Getting your customers to pay in a timely fashion and customers repeatedly changing their requests. we have agreed on this design. we have agreed on price. then you start making multiple change requests. all this is burning my energy and reducing profit and taking time from other jobs.
Two main challenges bedevil small and medium scale business growth in Nigeria: Capital base and purchasing power of the client base.
Competition becomes an issue if you are either in a crowded market, or you are in the wrong business.
Employees. They would finish you and run you down
1. Nigeria pathetic power supplies
2. Useless Nigeria Network
3. People perception of the business I do
4. Funds to boost facebook and google ads.
Entrepreneurs Greatest Challenge In Business
