The Big 5 Business Limiters + 1

I've been a business owner now since 1985, and have experienced much of the joy and pain that seems to go with the territory. At times it has been a struggle. And at times it has felt ridiculously easy.

To say there have been a multitude of "seasons" would be something of an understatement. Whilst the entire time I've been in the service industry, there have been changes within that business life that means that whilst my service product was much the same, the business was totally different. In size, structure, and strategy. This diversity has resulted in a number of observations.

I've read a lot of books that have helped along the way. Generally on something that I felt I was struggling with at the time. But for the most part they focus on some part of the puzzle. I've never really seen anything that succinctly gives a big picture overview of what limits the size or success of a business in its entirety.

At times I thought I had found the key. I'd try something and my business would flourish. But after a while I'd hit another boundary. Another factor that was limiting my business. And over the years I realised that there are a number of different factors that limit us.

After more than 20 years of going through this business life, I'm still not sure I've got the whole picture yet, but I think I've narrowed down five critical areas, all of which are vital to the size and success of our business. And any one of which will ultimately limit you if you don't improve on it, no matter what you do with the other points.

Now it's quite possible when you look at my list, you'll recognise in them things that have formed popular discussion under other names. However, just as advertising forms a subset of marketing, I think most of these popular discussions are subsets. Each subset is relevant and adds to our overall knowledge and understanding. Originally, when I first wrote about business limiters, I came up with a "big 5"; the main categories that make up the whole.

And they are:

• Ambition
• Capacity
• Capital
• Expertise
• Network

At various times in my business life, I've discovered that whilst all the other points were in place, a deficit in one of these points was holding my business back. In each instance, unblocking the point in question led to a leap forward.

Focusing on one point may produce results for a while, but if you don't pay attention to each of the other points, the time will come when you're going to hit a limit.

A quick example.
To get this one across, please note that I consider marketing as a subcategory of Network and production as a subcategory of Capacity. No matter how successful you are at marketing, if that is all you do and you ignore production, at some point production will be your limiting factor no matter how much marketing you do. Or in reverse, building production capacity without any attention to marketing and sooner or later your production will outstrip your buying market.

However, there is a sixth limiter and it's a real tester - environment. Because more often than not, the environment in which our business operates manages us rather than the other way round.

But with some careful thought and action, even that can be tamed.

With any luck I'll get round to commenting on each of these business limiters, but in the meantime, feel free to add your own thoughts as a comment.

10 webhosting ways to lose clients

I had to start looking around for a new webhosting service for The Forum SA the other day, and in the process learnt a few things about how to lose clients.

Here are my top 10 ways to lose clients if you are a webhosting service. And there might be a lesson or two in there for the rest of us mere mortals.

1. Offer a 24/7 support service, then make sure no-one on duty can solve the problem.
If you are going to do this, at least make sure that whoever responds shows some level of competence. When I report a problem, a response that the problem has been forwarded to someone who has enough skill to deal with it is OK. Taking 12 hours and a reminder to get a response from this expert is not. Especially when my website is in the middle of a melt down.

2. Offer a 99.9% uptime warranty, then don’t honour it when your client has 48 hours downtime.
If you are going to give a warranty, at least try to make sure it means something. My site went down a total of 23 hours in three incidents over 30 days. That would mean I am due about 3 years of trouble free webhosting. When it went down again the tech goes “it’s a goal.” Well, that’s not what the marketing says.

3. Make sure you have a hidden limit that will guarantee your client can’t use the big features you are famous for.
One of the latest games in webhosting is overselling. The package looks impressive, but buried in the fine print is a reference to abuse. This will relate to a technical limit that is the IT equivalent of passing a camel through the eye of a needle and keeping it alive in the process.

4. Tell the client to upgrade their package when you are using only 0.01% of the existing deal.
You have to wonder just how well designed this upgraded package is going to be given the obvious design flaw of the current package.

5. Make sure the upgrade costs 20 times more than the client is currently paying.
Make me wonder if your original package was a trap.

6. Tell the client that taking the upgrade is the only option.
Make sure I think your original offer was a trap so that I start doing some research. And find your competition's better offer for the upgrade features whilst I’m about it.

7. Increase the ridiculously low arbitrary limit that got your client upset and not tell the customer.
Realising you are about to lose a client and bending your "rules" to fix the problem is good. Not letting the client know you have made the effort is bad. And stupid.

8. Have your technicians draw up your marketing communication.
Technicians and coders like talking to machines. For good reason - they are not very good at talking to people.

9. Have a PayPal button for online payment, and then insist on a wire bank transfer.
Don’t offer an option if the client is not allowed to use it. Stick to rubbing salt in the existing wounds rather than finding new ways to cut the customer up.

10. Email the customer to call your support centre, and make sure the support centre can't use the telephone.
I could not believe it. In setting up a new hosting account elsewhere I was told to make a telephone call to sales. Not only did sales not know why I was calling (You asked me, remember!), the techie on the line started telling me to take my business elsewhere by email - whilst I was still talking to him on the phone!
See also 8 above.

Of course, at no point did they see any of this as an invitation to take my business elsewhere. Now to check if my business is not making the same mistakes somehow.