8 Steps to Transform Your Failed Business Into a Success Story If your business is struggling, take the advice here to thoroughly review what's not working and brainstorm new approaches. Reinventing it takes effort, but it could be what turns failure into your future success.
By Murali Nethi Edited by Kara McIntyre
Key Takeaways
- Effective reinvention stems from a thorough analysis of past failures, targeted modification of core offerings and an adaptable approach to redefine your market positioning.
- Business reinvention may necessitate creative pricing strategies, streamlined operations and a robust overhaul of your marketing efforts to reinvigorate growth.
- Sometimes, success after failure means embracing radical changes, considering partnerships or franchising and maintaining a flexible mindset ready to steer the business in a new direction.
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No business owner wants to face failure, but sometimes despite their best efforts, a business model just does not work out as planned. Trust me, failure does not have to be the end of the road. With some determination and a willingness to think outside the box, it is possible to turn things around by reinventing a failed business idea. It's also important because reinvention allows you to learn from past mistakes, gain new insights and emerge stronger with an improved strategy.
Here are a few tips that would help your business pass through the bad phase.
1. Analyze what went wrong
You need to thoroughly look back at what has not been working. You will need to closely examine every aspect of the business from top to bottom to understand what exactly caused it to fail. Was it the product or service offered? The target market? Pricing issues? Operational problems? Marketing mistakes? Carefully reviewing financial records, sales data, customer feedback and more can reveal the root problems holding the business back. With an accurate diagnosis of what has not been working, you can then determine the right areas to focus the reinventing efforts on.
Related: Here's How To Make a Graceful Exit When Your Startup Fails
2. Modify the core offering
Once you have identified issues with the original product or service, consider revamping or replacing the core offering. This may involve tweaking features, changing designs, improving quality, switching to a new delivery method and more. For example, a bakery selling bread could see slowing sales and decide to expand into specialty baked goods and desserts as well. A landscaping company struggling with high costs could shift to offering lawn care package plans. Making targeted adjustments or expansions to the core product or service line is a good way to breathe new life into the model.
3. Overhaul the target audience
It is also important to review whether aiming at the wrong customer segment is hampering your success. To correct that, you need to look for new demographic, psychographic or geographic groups that may be a better fit. For instance, a dress shop selling only business attire finds that most customers are older executives, so it focuses on career women in their 20s and 30s instead. As another example, a local pizza place sees it needs to attract families to boost weekend sales. Finding an audience more receptive to the offerings can make all the difference. What is key here is your market research; it will help you identify an optimal new target.
4. Rethink pricing strategies
Pricing problems are a frequent culprit in business failures. If you think this might be a major issue, consider altering price points, adding package deals and offering discounts. You can also think of implementing new payment options to make the business more affordable and accessible. A cafe may decide to start selling coffee subscriptions for a monthly discounted rate, or an event planning service may introduce less expensive basic packages in addition to high-end options. Being flexible and creative with how customers pay for products and services can open new doors. For that, you need to do your market comparisons first to ensure any new pricing is competitive and reasonable.
Related: Want to Be a Successful Entrepreneur? Fail.
5. Streamline operations
Inefficient or cumbersome internal procedures could also be draining time and resources away from growing the business. Look for ways to simplify workflows, delegate tasks, improve organization, speed up processes and reduce expenses involved in day-to-day operations. For example, if you have a flower shop, you may move inventory and sales online to cut down on in-store management. It also helps with your marketing, SEO and inventory management — what more could a florist ask for right?
6. Overhaul marketing strategy
Another crucial area for reinvention is marketing. You will need to reassess your target messaging, advertising platforms, branding, social media presence and all other promotional avenues. Outdated or ineffective marketing is clearly not helping to improve sales and growth. For instance, an auto repair shop sees slow website traffic, so it optimizes content and launches local search ads focused on specific services. Or a local store revamps its signs, coupons and social pages to better represent the new niche product focus. A complete marketing makeover tailored to converted goals and audience is essential if you want to see real growth.
7. Consider partnering or franchising
Looking into partnerships, alliances or franchising models could open up new revenue streams and expansion opportunities to reinvent sluggish growth. A bistro may choose to offer branded packaged meals for grocery stores to market on a wider scale, or a fitness app developer may seek brand collaborations with gyms and sports equipment companies for mutual promotion. When one business model is not working well independently, joining forces with others can take a concept further and fast-track your efforts (with built-in support systems).
Related: The No. 1 Reason Business Ideas Fail and How You Can Avoid It
8. Accept needed changes
Sometimes more drastic changes than anticipated are necessary to really turn things around from failure to sustainable success. Be open-minded and willing to overhaul aspects you may have initially thought were unchangeable if the reinvention process clearly indicates a major shift is required. For example, let's say a magazine publisher hopes to go digital-only and potentially needs to rebrand to better represent the new focus. Or an antique mall sees its future lies in shifting to an art gallery/studio format. Reinvention involves flexibility and taking big risks on new approaches even if a complete business model transformation results. Having a "whatever it takes" mentality will definitely help you get unstuck!
The most important things here are to figure out exactly what went wrong the first time and be open to new ideas for fixing problems. It also takes testing changes and not giving up, even if at first something different does not help right away. Reinventing is hard since it means changing a lot of things owners might have wanted to keep the same. But you have to do it for the sake of your business. Good luck!
