10 Ways You're Putting Yourself Out of Business Say goodbye to no-profit days. We show you what you're doing wrong and how to get back in the black.

Sometimes when I have an afternoon to spare, I go out and"snoop" a little. I'll drive to a nearby town andstop in to see how the local small businesses are doing. More oftenthan not, I'll open the door to a business, take a few stepsinside, and have someone toss an unenthusiastic "hello"in my direction. If I'm really lucky, they'll also hit mewith a less-than-enthusiastic "How may I help you" or theequally inspired "What are you looking for today?"

I stop in at these businesses to see how business is being donein small, independently owned storefronts and service businesses.And it's obvious that for the most part, it's not beingdone all that well! And while it may be in vogue to blame the woesof small business on the big box retailers or the chains or thegiant conglomerates, the truth is, it's the small-businessowners who are putting themselves out of business at an alarmingrate.

During my career, I've had the privilege of working withmore than 2,000 small businesses, and each one has been a uniqueand interesting experience. But in almost all cases, withinminutes, I could tell from looking at the business and visitingwith the owner and the staff that they were literally costingthemselves hundreds of dollars on a daily basis.

Is there anything that can be done to save a small businessthat's wasting away? You bet! And smart business owners knowtheir energy is best served concentrating on what they can controland forgetting about all the rest of the nonsense--like the growthof the big chains--going on around them.

From my point of view, here are the 10 most common ways smallbusinesses are killing themselves:

1. No one seems to take a long view of business anymore.Many business owners often look no further ahead than their nextpayroll or their next rent payment. Why is that? Generally it'sa lack of time--business owners get so caught up in the day-to-daynonsense of running a business that they forget to think ahead. Butevery small-business owners needs to steal away for a few hourseach week to do nothing but "think." Try to spend atleast two hours per week looking at your business from a point ofview other than from behind your sales counter or office desk.

2. Everyone's forgotten about good manners? Not longago, I visited a small insurance agency. I walked in and approachedthe counter. Facing me were five desks, two on the left and threeon the right, each with someone sitting behind the desk, alsofacing me. But not one person got up to assist me. After anuncomfortable 30 seconds had gone by, someone gave me a gruff"Hello" from the seat of her desk chair. Now I don'twant a person "attacking me" as soon as I come throughthe door, but someone should at least have gotten up andacknowledged that I was there. Please, just a smile and a friendlyhello...and get your lazy butt out of the chair, for God'ssake! We may all poke fun at the Wal-Mart "greeters" butit's a heck of a lot better than grunting a fake"hello" at someone from across the room.

3. Did everybody forget what a broom and dustpan are for?Clean up your stores and offices, people! Run a vacuum now andthen, and while you're at it, get our your dust rags. Therejust isn't any excuse for having papers stacked everywhere,layers of dust on everything, and a general sense of mess greetingthe public when they visit your business. And don't get mestarted on the shape of the bathroom I find in most smallbusinesses.

4. They've put no thought into their ads. Smallbusinesses seem to love business card-type ads. You know the oneswith the business name on top, some brilliant statement like"In business since 1975" on line two with the address andphone number underneath. Pretty exciting, huh? Yep, that's whatthe people who read those types of ads think.

5. No one seems to train their employees. There's ahuge gap between big businesses and small businesses when it comesto training. Most big businesses have standard operating proceduresor even a training manual. I've yet to see a trainingmanual--even though I'm sure they're out there--for anindependently owned small business. But they sure could useone!

6. Can you say "joint venture"? So many smallbusinesses could benefit from forming an alliance with anotherbusiness that shares a similar type of customer. Let's say aflorist and a caterer joined forces. The florist could do a directmailer to their customers and promote the products and services ofthe caterer, and then the caterer could promote the florist ontheir website. In all my years of experience, I've found jointventures to be unbelievably profitable to small businesses.

7. They neglect to separate themselves from the crowd. Wemarketers toss around the term "unique sellingproposition" all the time. But I've found that only aboutone small business in 100 can tell me in 50 words or less why I orany other consumer should deal with them as opposed to all theother choices we have in the market. All this takes is some thoughtas to what your target market is and what the big benefit is thatyou give them as opposed to what your competitors can provide tothe same market.

8. They have no regard for their customers. If more smallbusinesses treated their customers like the family dog--yes, I saidthe family dog--they'd most likely find a lot fewer of themmigrating to the new superstore or franchise food business in town.This isn't rocket science--people just want to be respected andacknowledged. But in the daily whirlwind of running a smallbusiness, entrepreneurs forget that.

When I was first starting out, I used to laugh when I heardsmall-business owners say, "This would be a great business ifI didn't have to deal with the customers." But I don'tsee the humor in that anymore. There are simple things you can doto let your customers know they're important to you. One way isby simply staying in touch with your customer base. I don'tknow of any business that can't increase sales by using aquarterly newsletter mailed to their customer list--none!

9. Many businesses treat their employees worse than theytreat their worst customers. But you should be treating them aswell as you treat your best customers! And while somesmall-minded business owners don't believe that's the thingto do, I think many do get it. Finding and keeping good people hasnever been harder, and it's only going to get worse. And thecost of training a new employee can be astronomical, not just interms of the time and money it takes, but because you may just losecustomers that way. As consumers, we value consistency overeverything else, so when you change employees, you risk losing yourconsistency, especially if you don't have a formal trainingprogram in place. And if your business isn't consistent in howit serves its customers then those customers will leave you at thefirst opportunity--guaranteed.

10. They have no real understanding of the numbers theirbookkeeper or accountant spins off for them. Not long ago, Ihad the painful experience of meeting with the owner of a smallrestaurant who had severe cash flow problems. The first line item Ilooked at in his budget was the cost of goods, specifically thecost of the food it took to make the various dishes on the menu.Guess what? After spending a few hours breaking down costs, wequickly determined that his food costs were a good 10 percenthigher than what was normal for the industry. Ten percent! Now thisdidn't occur overnight, so why didn't his accountant orbookkeeper raise a red flag over this? I know why. It's becausemost bookkeepers and accountants either don't understand the"rules of thumb" numbers for most businesses, or theydon't communicate the problems they see. I'm guessingit's more often the second thing than the first, but it'sdeadly in either case.

So there you go: 10 reasons why small businesses in this countryare behind the eight ball and what they can do about it. The goodthing is, this stuff is all common sense--or it should be. But asan experienced, successful businessperson told me once many yearsago, "Michael, common sense isn't so common." I tendto agree.

Michael Winicki is the owner of Big Noise Marketing and hasworked with more than 2,000 small businesses across 136 differentindustries. Visit his website for more information.