I’m a pretty positive person, I’ve worked out my ideas based on the, you’re here, I’m here, we might as well have some fun philosophy of life, and so my posts are usually positive because I really do believe that we always have a choice and there’s always something you can do – rather than sit and stew ! (rhymes are free)

So while you’re practically promised lots of positivity from me in my posts and information about how to succeed in business, I thought, just for one post, I’d venture over to the dark side….. with some brilliant ideas about how to really make life difficult for ourselves, create some problems and generally just balls it up big time!
So, here’s the caveat, obviously I don’t want you to follow this advice (lawsuits need not apply) but these gentle (ish) reminders might help us enjoy some of the common ways that we can fail…. Prepare yourself, this might hurt …….!

Hiding in fear

We’ve all been subjected to the media’s attempts to scare the bejesus out of us, and its wholly natural to feel unsure about where business is going over the next few months. Fear is the natural response to this and halting all plans and hunkering down to sit it out…. As if its all magically going to get back to “business as normal” One of the fastest ways to shoot yourself in the foot is to stop your marketing, networking and PR efforts. If you don’t do this stuff, your competition will – and you’ll be watching their brilliant efforts and feeling bad.

Not exceeding your customers expectations

Of course you’re down about business being slow. So the best thing to do is to make sure you don’t exert any extra impetus or energy to go above and beyond what your customers expect from you. After all, don’t they know there’s a recession on and we’re barely coping? If we only do the bare minimum then the customers will give us very little future business and we’ll have lots of free time for moaning, griping and complaining which will be satisfying because we knew we were right about the customers not caring anyway.

Don’t use your existing client base

Do you want a really fast and easy way to screw it all up this year? Then pay attention because this is it ! Keep hitting your head against the wall with expensive advertising to attract new customers and avoid the cost-efficient existing customers who’ve already bought from you, to whom you can cross-sell and possibly upsell. Of course, your current customers probably appreciate and need what you have to offer, but it’s so much more invigorating, putting the effort in with those mysterious other people, “the extended market” who may never buy from you. It’s a battle of wills and that’s so much more fun than a zinging x report !

Its all about me

Of course its all about you - Doh? When it comes to networking, it’s the best policy to just keep thinking about what you can get out of each one of your contacts. Don’t bother to be helpful or useful. Why should you produce fact sheets or how to guides for your customers, don’t they realise that you had to learn all this stuff the hard way, and they should too dammit !

Develop a Reputation for Irrelevance and Inefficiency

Sharp but true, each of us is a brand, just as our shops and businesses are brands, we’re the brand ambassadors – ok we don’t have Kate Moss’s clothes, or Uma Therman’s watch, but we’re brand ambassadors all the same. Some of us are quality brands that customers appreciate and buy from and others are the “Trotters Independent traders” of brands that should be avoided. To really efficiently avoid success this year we should work hard on letting our brand identities get trashed in our customers and prospective customers eyes.

We could make some promises that we can’t keep, not do what we say we’ll do, be downright argumentative, and generally maintain a bad attitude – oooh for good measure we could read the paper in the shop – that’ll show them that we just don’t care !

Make sure your staff know how annoying the customers can be

Customers, they come in when you’ve just got a cup of tea, or they want to buy something when you’ve just finished the display – and it took hours to get just right ! The nerve of them, asking questions, wanting different sizes, while your staff just want to get on with the jobs on their to do list for the day and get them ticked off, then they can have a good gossip behind the counter about what they’re having for tea or what their friend said to their other friend, or come out with useful phrases like “everything we have is out on the shopfloor” which as we all know is a winner !

Oooh, We’ve just got started, there are sooooo many ways to right royally screw it up this year. In fact, I’ve quite enjoyed writing this, I might do another one, its like therapy, but cheaper !

But I’m a balanced kind of girl, so let’s acknowledge that there are just as many opportunities for success, if you want them. It really is a glass half full, or half empty situation…. Not getting that ? – Try squinting because the situation really does depend on how you see it. So let’s stay positive, motivated and be helpful to your customers and beyond…

In the words of the great Bob Marley – “Everything is going to be alright” He also said “My feet is my only carriage, so I’ve got to push on through” So I get the feeling he would have agreed with my post ! Yeah !