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Small businesses are often built on passion with many owners investing hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars perfecting their product or service.

When I ask clients about their business most spend 95% of the time telling me about their product. Nothing about marketing, financial position, business plans or the market the product is aimed at.

There is a sense of ‘build it and they will come’, as long as the product is there, so are the sales. Unfortunately, this is often not the case; otherwise they wouldn’t be sitting before me requiring marketing and business consulting.

Here are the top three business mistakes small business owners make and the first steps to overcoming them.

Having a product and not promoting it

Most owners offer products they are passionate about which is a great start. But what marketing strategies are in place to promote them: public relations, networking, advertising, direct mail, events, sales, channel management, database marketing or a website?

Some of you may be thinking, “Channel what?” or “Database marketing? All my data is on a piece of paper in a file”. The strategic mix is tailored to business needs so some of these tactics may not be relevant. However, there is one strategy many businesses have up and running and rarely use to its full potential - their website.

Websites are a cost effective way of getting a product out there, unfortunately, once the site is built it’s rarely promoted.

Sites are highly affordable however they are a waste of time and money if people can’t find you. Research indicates that:

- 83% of Internet users go straight to search engines (eg Yahoo) to look for products and services, and

- 93% of users never look past the first few pages of results.

Based on the above research let’s do a quick exercise using your favourite search engine to discover the likelihood of people finding your business online:

- Search on your business’ name and see if it appears in the first page of results.

- Next, type in the words people search on to find your business. For example if you make wedding cakes in Melbourne people may type in: ‘wedding cakes’, ‘cakes Melbourne’, ‘wedding cake designs’, ‘wedding cake ideas’. Enter those search words into the search engine and see if your business appears within the first few pages. If it doesn’t, it’s unlikely your website is used to its potential.

If the only way people know about your site is by spotting the URL on your business card or flyer, your site is nothing more than an online brochure.

As a start, you need to submit your website address to search engines in order for people to find your business online. You can do this for free by visiting www.submitexpress.com

Secondly, discover what words people are using to find products like yours and make sure you use them in your website content and meta-tags (your web designer will know what this means). A useful tool is Overture, http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Head in the Sand Accounting

As a mentor in 2006’s Women in Business program the modules participants found most challenging were accounting. As one mentoree said, “Looking at my business’ finances is like getting on the scales to weigh myself. Ignorance is bliss.”

In either case you have to know the numbers to be proactive about the situation.

One of the greatest frustrations were customers who extended their terms of payment from 30 to 60 and even 90 plus days which greatly affected cash flow and often survival. Include a discount on invoice totals for early or on-time payment. Think of it this way, if they’re late, they’re paying a penalty, so make sure you build the discount into your prices and let them know upfront the benefit of paying on time.

Keeping track of outgoings and sales was another challenging area. You’d be surprised how many people forget to write down the taxi ride or all the materials purchased for a product. This is all-important stuff, for example, as a consultant I quote on projects up front, usually based on an hourly rate. If I spend more time than I quote, or have additional expenses I didn’t include such as couriers, it comes out of my fee which means my hourly rate is diminished, the project isn’t as profitable and in reality may not have been worth my while.

As a start, get a spreadsheet and include costs on one sheet and sales on the other, it will give you a clear picture of how your business is tracking and your accountant can help you with the rest.

Remember, knowing your financial position allows you to move forward in a positive direction.

Failing to plan

I recently met a prospective client named Rebecca who wanted to grow her sales by 20%. Within five minutes I realised she was stuck in the rut of working ‘in’ the business and not working ‘on’ the business.

70% of her time was spent responding to customer enquiries and administration and 30% was spent sourcing new products. To work towards the sales goal we looked at the tasks filling her day and decided which were useful but not business critical or affecting profitability. Rebecca said she loved sourcing new products but realised that unless she had someone to sell them to it wasn’t time well spent during this stage of her business so she decided to ‘steal’ time from that area and focus on sales development.

Rebecca eventually realised her dilemma was a result of not having a plan. A tool I recommend is the one-page business plan as it’s an ideal way to tackle all three business mistakes by allowing owners to plan marketing activities, set and manage financial goals with the aim of achieving a flourishing business and balanced life. Clients are amazed that in just two hours and one-page we work to escape the business fog. For free business resource and planning templates visit www.businessballs.com