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Compromise is a word that we should all stop using so often. Who wants to compromise? No one does. No one wants to reduce their values, integrity or dignity for the sake of something that isn’t worth it. Think of it this way. Let’s say you had the option of specializing your product to a niche or diversifying your portfolio of products. You might be clever and try to do both by expanding your selection of items while also trying to specialize. Sadly, this spreads your resources too thinly and you’ll just have a bunch of products and services that neither meet niche demands nor do they appeal to a wide audience, effectively killing your business because you can’t make a sale.
Compromises don’t exist in business, and below are a few considerations to think about before you make your next big business decision and decide you want to make a compromise.
Service for your customers
There’s no such thing as compromising when you have to appeal to your customers. They’re loyal to you, they give you money and they’re important to the success of your brand. If you even try to annoy them by compromising their product in an attempt to do something like reach a wider audience, your customers are going to feel betrayed and they’re going to end up turning to another company for their products. This is especially important if you want your startup to be successful; you have to specialize in something so that your customers build up trust in your brand. If you break this trust by making compromises, then you’re going to break that bond and they’ll be left with a bad impression of your business.
A price you have to pay
Compromises can also come from the quality of your equipment. For instance, if you operate a specialized business that requires specific machinery like material handling equipment, then you need to invest in quality. You have to pay for engineers to work on the machinery, you’ll need to invest in people who can repair it, and you need to pay a lot of money upfront to even afford the equipment. You can expect your products and services to remain reliable and good-quality if you don’t invest in the equipment required to provide them, so don’t neglect to spend money where it’s needed and never make compromises. Be it expensive machinery, powerful computers or even just quality microphones for your customer support staff, never cut corners.
Quality speaks for itself
Your customers are going to be the ones that look at your products on a regular basis. They’ll always be using them, be it a service or a physical product, and they’re going to know everything about it. It could be cakes you bake, pens you produce, or an outsourcing service that you provide—they’re going to know when you change something. If you try to reduce operating costs by switching to lower-quality supplies or cut corners to speed up work and go through more orders, then your customers will notice and they’ll cry foul when they realize the quality has dropped. Don’t make compromises like this—stick to quality.
