Business & Finance

Challenges of Small Enterprises

Challenges of Small Enterprises

Alexander Djerassi believes that starting a business is one thing and managing and maintaining it is another. Building a successful business is every entrepreneur’s dream, but this comes with many challenges, especially when it is a small enterprise. All trades, both small and large, face many challenges, but the small enterprises face many challenges that the large ones have already faced to become the large household brands they are. Here are some of the challenges that small enterprises will face in their development.

Finding customers

Customers are the primary factor that leads to the growth of a business. Finding the right customers for one’s business is not an easy task. Large brands themselves are constantly on campaigns to find new customers for their brands. Therefore the task of finding new customers is a continuous one. Small enterprises find it difficult to determine their ideal customers and run programs to reach out to them and make them their loyal customers. This difficulty is brought about by the lack of enough spending power of incurring the cost of reaching out to customers. After finding customers, small enterprises tend to depend on a single customer, making them vulnerable to becoming handicapped when they do not have a constant need for their product or service or terminate the contract.

Financials

Finance is the primary small enterprise’s challenge. One must have enough money to run a business and cover the bills. Accessing the resources needed by small businesses is quite tricky since loan approval for small enterprises is low. Since the company depends on an individual, raising enough cash to sustain the business and their lives as well is quite difficult, it requires them to be heavily financed. That’s why most opt to work on a job while building the business. When the cash begins flowing, money management becomes a factor that demands seeking the help of a professional to help in bookkeeping. Hiring a professional is quite tricky for a small enterprise.

Depending on the founder

Small businesses depend heavily on the founder in many factors, which include daily running management. Most business owners fail to let go of some tasks such that the company cannot run when they are not available. Alexander Djerassi, an entrepreneur and a foreign policy expert, comments that this dependence leads to fatigue and low productivity. This fatigue can lead to poor decision-making and a desire to abandon the business as well. Finding a program that will keep the business running when the founder is not there is a challenge small businesses face.

Brand awareness

Making the brand known for a small business is quite tricky. Running programs and campaigns to let the crowd know about and identify with the product is an expensive process that small enterprises find challenging to initiate. According to Djerassi, brand awareness is a continuous activity that helps diversify the client base.

Small enterprises face these challenges as they seek to grow. The owners must find ways to overcome them to maintain growth and stability. The methods that one uses to overcome these graduates range from small enterprise owners to large business owners.