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Business Rut: 3 Things You Should Assess Immediately

Posted: November 13, 2018
By: Janet A Johnson

Like athletes, sometimes even the best companies lose their streak and hop on a trend of misses, we can say it’s part of the game but that doesn’t mean you should wait around for luck to come your way. Looking into why your business’ performance is in a lengthy dip requires more than just looking at the numbers. “Take the bull by the horn” and begin to assess why you are facing a business rut.  To give you some ideas, I am drawing from my many years of management consulting to give you a few reasons why you could be in a business rut.

1. Disjointed Business Processes

Top of the list and hard to pick out as the reason behind your company’s decelerated rate of progress – aligning business processes with your objectives. We won’t say it’s easy building a company up from scratch until you have clearly defined departments to handle the various tasks that bring revenue, yet we should agree that it is very hard to maintain fluid business processes across departments.

Even when the departments are still abstract, there is a need to respect each process and establish a framework that sees through every task. For instance, most companies know how to market their business. However, when it comes to closing the sale, a lot is left to be desired. That may not be your exact case, but when two such business processes don’t have strong synapses, you’re soon to find yourself with more outgoing clients than those coming in.

2. Inadequate Marketing Strategies

With the internet widely accessible and ready for you to use as a marketing channel, some assume that it makes things easier to prevent a business rut. However, access to information does not solve the problem.  In fact, this line of thinking is exactly why a lot of marketing executives cannot explain their spending and returns deficits.  You see, without strategically mapping out custom marketing channels and campaigns to boost your business – sometimes this means failing, again and again, your company will always come 2nd at best in your area of focus. Design a custom marketing plan to give you the edge over your competition.

3. Low Team Morale Is a Sure Recipe for Business Rut

When all is said and done, your team has to be as motivated and crazy about your business as you are, every day. A hard feat in itself, even for the owner of a company. However, when your team is anything other than motivated to keep knocking activities off their to-do list, your company will eventually find itself in a slump. In other words, it drives you in a business rut. For this, even when money is probably the biggest motivation, team-building activities have also been observed to increase morale.

Final Thoughts

There are hundreds of other reasons capable of placing companies in what looks like permanent slumps, and any of them could as well be behind your frustration. A probe into the source should not be deferred at any cost. If you feel like your business could be doing so much better than what you’re currently experiencing, you will need to conduct assessments to find the root cause. Then you will need to devise strategies to address the problem.