4 Common Business Mistakes That Can Stifle Your Company’s Growth

By Neel Parekh

As a business owner, you want to do everything you can to ensure you maximize your company's growth and overall success. From marketing to customer relations, to sales strategies and employee engagement, it is important to constantly assess all of your business processes and make necessary adjustments to those that need improvement.

To help prevent the possibility of a plateau in growth and overall company progression, you must also avoid common blunders that many business owners make.

Are you worried that you might be unknowingly making mistakes that prevent your company from reaching its full potential? From my own experience of starting and expanding a business, I’ve pinpointed a list of common mistakes committed by new entrepreneurs. Make sure you avoid these blunders that can stifle your company’s growth.

4 common business mistakes to avoid

Business mistake #1: Not approaching marketing with a data-driven mindset

Every business needs a solid marketing plan to successfully compete in today’s market. From weekly email blasts to social media advertising, SEO strategies to public relations tactics, it is vital that companies make marketing a priority in order to effectively reach and attract their target demographic. However, to make the most of their marketing spend, business leaders need to have a data-driven approach when setting up their marketing plan.

What exactly does this mean? Well, many new companies make the common business mistake of not analyzing data when setting up and executing their marketing plans. These businesses will implement a marketing tactic, and if it doesn't seem to be gaining traction, they will simply stop using it without looking at the numbers. If they had spent time analyzing the data, they would have a better picture of what budget amounts should be used for various marketing tactics, which demographic those initiatives should target more, and so on.

On top of this, if businesses don’t approach marketing with a data-driven mindset, they may spend money on a certain tactic (like Facebook advertising) but be completely unaware of the true ROI of their campaign.

Analyze what tactics you want to try, devote a planned budget to them, use the budget, test them out, and then move on to the next. After checking the data, you may realize that tactics you never thought of using are actually more effective than ones that you initially thought would gain the most traction.

Business mistake #2: Not having a mentor to learn from

When you launch a business, one of the major challenges is not knowing what to do. Thus, having a coach/guide/mentor who has already "been there, done that" is crucial. If you don’t have a mentor, you may find yourself making a ton of mistakes as you get your new business fully up and running.

For example, you may end up spending a lot of money on a certain project management platform that you don’t really need, making mistakes with your accounting, using an ineffective sales approach ... the list goes on.

To find a mentor, look into your current network and see if you are connected to an established business owner to whom you can turn for helpful advice. Or check out one of the many online entrepreneur communities. You can also join associations related to your industry, attend conferences and conventions, and check out local networking events for entrepreneurs.

More articles from AllBusiness.com:

• Failure to Communicate: How to Keep Stress Down When Managing People
• Top Business Budgeting Mistakes
• 5 Entrepreneurship Lessons Learned From Raising Kids
• Successful Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs Possess These 5 Traits
• How Non-Tech Companies Can Benefit From AI

Business mistake #3: Not building a culture that is conducive to growth

If you want your business to flourish for years to come, you need to ensure that it has a culture that encourages growth and innovation. One way to do this is by making sure your team members know that their feedback and input is always welcome. This will make them feel valued, heard, and supported, which will also encourage them to want to stay and grow with your business. They will be more motivated to speak up about ways to improve your business and help it reach greater levels of success.

As a business leader, you have so much to juggle every day that you may be completely unaware one of your marketing strategies or sales tactics needs improvement, or that there is an better way to handle an administrative duty. Or, you may not know that one of your employees would prefer to work on another project that they are better suited for.

Encourage your team members to always share these types of concerns with you. You can set up an “employee suggestion box” or schedule weekly or biweekly meetings with your employees to go over where things are at, and to find out if they think any changes are necessary.

Business mistake #4: Not removing team members who don’t fit the work culture

To maintain a positive work environment, it is crucial that all of your team members work well together and enjoy interacting with each other. This helps projects get completed by their deadlines, keeps morale high, and ensures the entire business is always moving forward.

Thus, don’t make the mistake of keeping on a team member who always has rifts with colleagues, thinks their own opinions and ideas matter the most, slacks off and underperforms, isn’t open to constructive feedback, or doesn’t pull their own weight.

If you retain a team member who impedes the larger team's performance, it can cause friction and frustration in your staff. Therefore, once you pinpoint an issue with an employee, have a meeting with them to see if they can take steps to resolve it. If they are not open to making any changes to help fix the issue, then you should consider letting them go (work with an HR professional to ensure you are following all applicable laws and regulations regarding employee termination). You need a team that is always willing to make changes to help the business progress.

Avoiding blunders will help your business grow

As a business owner, you want to do whatever you can to help your company grow. Being careful to avoid these common business mistakes that many people make will help ensure your company has a long, successful future.

RELATED: 13 Business Technology Mistakes Many Startups Make