3 Areas of Your Business You Need to Evaluate

Half year business reviewHow time flies! Half of 2017 is already gone. This is a good time to take a break and evaluate your progress in business. Are you on track based on the goals you set early this year? If so, congratulations! Forge ahead. Otherwise are you feeling as if you are going round in circles without achieving much? Don’t throw in the towel yet.

Here are three areas of your business you need to evaluate and straighten up:

  1. Your Value Proposition
    When a lady goes to the salon and spends three hours having her hair done, what is she looking for actually? A hairdo? No. She wants to look beautiful and to feel confident. Maybe she wants to impress a panel of interviewers for a job, or potential investors at a networking meeting.
    What problem is your product or service solving? What are you selling actually? Why would clients come to you and not go to the competition for the same?
  2. Your Ideal Customer
    A few years ago during my network marketing years, we used to be told that everybody is our customer. That’s not true. You need to identify who needs your products or services based on the problem you are solving for them. Who is your ideal customer, the one who will happily pay for your services because they need what you have to offer? If a few people have already paid for your product or service at the rate you consider ideal, write down their profile in details then look for other people like them and forget about everybody else.
  3. Your Resources
    A young ladypreneur contacted me recently for a soft loan. She’s been three months in business and she thinks that all she needs is capital so that she can increase her stock, make more money and grow her business. On probing her I realised that she pays herself from the profits of her young business instead of reinvesting them. What she need at this stage is to leverage on the free resources available to her and focus on growing her clientele, which in return will translate in business growth.Have you leveraged enough on the resources available to you? These could be starting your business in your house instead of renting, getting into barter agreements with service providers who need your services, and so on. Think deeply about what you can do to reduce your need to spend.

There you have it. Rethink your value proposition, identify your ideal customers and review the way you’ve taken advantage of the resources available to you over the first half of the year, then make adjustments where necessary.

What hurdle are you facing at this time? Share with me in the comments below.

P.S. I can help you get unstuck and move your business forward. Click here to find more about the Steer Your Business program.

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About Angela

Angela Kamanzi is passionate about empowering African women through entrepreneurship. She is the publisher and founding editor of MKAZI, a digital magazine that offers solutions and tools to women who are starting up in business or taking their ventures to the next level. She is the founder of BizzRafiki-Your Friend in Biashara, a mentorship program which specialises in helping budding or aspiring women entrepreneurs start or grow high income business ventures from their passion. For more than ten years she contributed to a number of local and international publications as a freelance writer. She has 15 years of experience in entrepreneurship. She lives in Nairobi with her husband and their two sons. Her journey was featured on Lionesses of Africa, on AM Live NTV , in the Saturday Nation, on Supamamas website and Mummy Tales blog.

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