According to the US Small Business Administration Advocacy, about two-thirds of businesses with employees survive at least two years, but only 50% make it to the five-year mark and just one third celebrate their 10-year anniversary.
A quick internet search will derive a number of expert opinions but broadly they fit into the following categories:
- Failure of the Leadership/Management team
- No real market differentiation
- Failure of the sales team
- Unprofitable Business Model
- Poor Financial Management and Planning
- Expanding Too Quickly
Most of these reasons are addressable with good external input; leaders can evolve, and teams can change; the business model can iterate to identify a profitable way forward and the market proposition can get better as learnings from mistakes are taken on board.
The attached toolkit dives deeper into these common reasons why businesses fail and uses these learnings to offer advice on how you can manage your business differently and achieve sustainable success.
