Recently some of us from StuckOn attended the Manchester Business Show at the ‘Manchester Central Exhibition Centre’. At the show we listened to a variety of guest speakers talking about their business experiences, and how they succeeded (or failed) in their enterprises.
One of the speakers was Rachel Elnaugh, who you may remember from early seasons of BBC’s Dragons’ Den. Rachel was the founder of the company ‘Red Letter Days’, which she built from scratch to a company generating a £10 million turnover – pretty useful by anyone’s book.
In her talk Rachel spoke openly about how she grew the business, the mistakes she made on the way and the eventual failure of the business due to attempted expansion plans that were undertaken too fast, too soon.
One of the points Rachel did make about why her business was successful however, and a point that many people starting their new business fail to grasp, is the importance of sales. Rachel highlighted how you shouldn’t waste time trying to perfect your business stationery, or worrying about your offices – you should be making sales, more sales and then even more sales. Without sales you don’t have a business (a comment you may have heard many of the dragons make over the years).
Rachel is of course absolutely right, and unlike in the days when Rachel first started Red Letter Days (when mobile phones were the size of house bricks and the Internet was something exclusively for geeks) the web is now the first port of call for many looking to make purchases and do business. This means that a website, an effective website, is the most important tool in your businesses’ armoury. You need your website to work, to attract customers and to make sales – otherwise it’s failing you and your business.
If you’re looking to start your own business, or have already started one, don’t leave it too late before realising where things are going wrong. SEO takes time, and websites need to grow organically before they are successful and generating revenue for you. Look at your website first, then worry about the frills of business.
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