Business gaps are unavoidable in business. But as serious business people, we need to be aware of them to take precautionary steps to bridge them. You have to keep a keen eye on the missing links in your business to find ways of narrowing them down. If you do not, you risk falling out in your business enterprise.
To bridge your business gaps, you must first be clear about your business vision. Being clear about your business vision makes it possible to know where you want to go and how to go there. It is essential to know the current situation of your business, relate it with what you want your business to be in future and identify business gaps in between. You cannot be clear about what is missing unless you know the specific aspects of your business to which you need to pay attention to narrow the missing links and achieve your business goals.
Key Factors to Consider in Identifying your Business Gaps
Let me share the following ten key aspects you need to focus on identifying your business gaps.
Business Skills
1. Skills
If you do not have the required skills to do business, it’s essential to address the gap early enough. When analysing your skills, focus on manual, personal, social, and technical skills. Find out whether you have them or you need to hire someone with them. If you are to hire another person, do you have the money to pay him? Which other skills do you have to acquire to achieve your goals?
2. Knowledge
Lack of knowledge is among the top list of business gaps. You should have enough knowledge concerning the kind of business you are doing. If you lack this knowledge, think about what you can do to address this gap. For instance, you can buy a book and read to get new knowledge and skills and apply them to your business. You can also get someone to coach you. “Learn something new. Try something different. Convince yourself that you have no limits”, said Brian Tracy.
3. Quality of Products and Services
Quality Products
Are your products and services of good quality? Can they compete against those of your business competitors? If not, what can you do to improve to avoid losing your customers? How are you going to strengthen in this aspect? If you are running an online business, look at the quality of your website as well. Does it have a good appearance and design? Can it attract customers to take the desired action?
4. Target Customers
Not having enough target customers is one of the most severe business gaps. It is, therefore, crucial to focus on the number of customers you have and find out whether they are increasing or decreasing or constant. Why do your customers buy from you? Who and what are they? What can make others become your customers?
5. Location of Your Business
Is the location of your business making it possible for you to achieve your business goals? Think about what you can do about it! Change the location? What if you cannot change it. What other business channels will you use to reach your targeted customers? The online business location may mean something different such as your rank in the search engine result pages (SERPs) and your Google page rank.
6. Promotional Activities
How are you positioning your product on the market? What kind of advertising are you using? Are you doing enough? What are you currently not doing that you should do to achieve your goals? Why aren’t you doing it? How are you packaging your product?
7. Personal Activities
Not focusing on your business may lead to the collapse of your business. If you want to survive the rigours of competition and management, you have to give it time and concentrate on it. How much time and input do you give to your business? Find out if this is a significant business gap with you!
8. Employees
Employee Teamwork
If you are employing people to work in your business, you need to pay special attention to the kind of stuff you have. Having the wrong people can lead to the collapse of your business. And not creating a conducive environment for them to do the work can cause severe damage to your business. How committed are your employees? Secondly, how is their attitude? Thirdly, what can you do to improve their working conditions? What can you do to motivate them and get the best out of them?
9. Systems and Procedures
You can never succeed in business if you do not have quality standards. You achieve quality through setting proper systems and procedures for doing things in your firm. Look at them. Do you see any business gaps?
10. Market Area
When you look at the market area in which you operate, what do you see concerning the competition, size and expansion? What business gaps do you think you can address in this aspect?
Finally, defining your business gaps is very important because it helps you focus on what needs to be improved upon to achieve your goals and remain focused on your business vision. You can use the identified business gaps to remind you what to prioritise, set objectives and concentrate on the critical issues in your business planning.
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