Building a successful company is not an easy task. Founders have to endure failures, self-doubts, and threats by competitors to burgeon into a big company. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 45% of businesses reach their fifth year.
And only 25% of new companies make it to 15 years.
Companies that eventually become successful learn from their failures and make appropriate changes to their business model.
This article will show you lessons big companies learned early on and parlayed them to dominate their industries.
1. Hire Brilliant People
It’s said that the sum is only as good as the parts. This principle is fundamental among successful HR professionals. They believe that a company can only be as successful as its employees. So if they hire the wrong candidates for job positions, the company will likely fail in the long term as the employees will not provide their best efforts.
Big Companies nowadays invest in good hiring practices such as Applicant Tracking Software and Value-based employment assessments to ensure they employ suitable candidates. Hiring the right candidates indirectly boosts your company’s productivity, leading to better financial performance.
Orabush is an example of a company that succeeded by hiring the right talent for the right job. Orabrush is a tongue cleaner invented by Robert Wagstaff. After unsuccessfully trying to market his product through traditional channels like infomercials, he hired Jeffrey Harmon, a YouTuber. Jeffery’s video about the product went viral giving Robert the breakthrough he had yearned for a long time.
2. Listen to your customers
Knowing your customers’ needs helps you to deliver products or services that sell. Most companies make the mistake of not investing in customer research. So their messaging doesn’t align with the needs of their prospects. And their products don’t effectively solve the problems of their possible customers too.
Successful companies build what their customers want. When Amazon launched Prime in 2005, many people said the concept would fail. However, by listening to their customers, they’d learned of a growing need for faster and reliable delivery of products. Amazon Prime has grown to become the most popular program of the company, with millions of happy customers.
3. Curve out your area of expertise
The most successful companies have niched down to a specific service. For example, Walmart always offers rock bottom prices for their goods, and Apple is known for its beautifully designed products like iPhones and iPads. Choose one area of your niche and invest in dominating it. Experts automatically rise to the top of their market.
It takes patience and consistency to trounce your competitors and become the most popular company in a niche. Be ready to invest in providing the best product for a specific customer before growing your wings to other categories. It pays to begin as a specialist – even Amazon started as an online bookshop before the expansion.
4. Invest in Cybersecurity
Companies rarely survive the aftermath of data breaches. Data breaches’ effects include losing business records, personal information, and company data.
A bad reputation is the most dangerous effect of data breaches. No one would ever want to do business with you for fear that hackers would get their personal information.
Companies like Code Spaces and Nirvanix shut down six months after data breaches because customers and investors left. So how can you avoid such an experience?
Investing in Cybersecurity reduces the chances of data breaches in your company. Some of the cybersecurity best practices include using a password manager.
A password manager enables your employees to create and store longer passwords with unique characters. Longer passwords are harder to crack compared to shorter ones.
Encrypted password managers help to prevent data breaches early on as employees will have secure accounts. You only need to remember the password that gives access to the manager, where you store all your passwords to the business accounts.
5. Constant Reinvention
Nokia was one of the leading mobile phone makers in the early 2000s. But they eventually fell behind when other mobile telephony companies like Samsung, Apple, and Tecno shifted to smartphones. Had Nokia not resisted the change, they would still now have a considerable share of the mobile telephony market.
As a business, you need to be in a constant state of reinvention. You can do this by observing trends in your market and how your customers behave towards competitors’ products. Jeff Bezos insists that Amazon should remain a Startup even though it’s a big company.
He says that startups always try new ideas and look for breakthroughs, while big companies are always slow and relaxed.
Conclusion
Companies become successful by learning from their own and competitors’ failures. By implementing lessons from losses, you can build your company faster and make it outlast your competitors.
Some of the lessons big companies learned early on include hiring the right people, listening to customers, investing in cybersecurity, and constantly reinventing themselves.
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