Missed Business Opportunities

My sister and young nieces came over to the UK from Australia for Christmas so we visited a lot of places I wouldn't normally visit and one of my biggest realisation's was how many business opportunities some of those businesses were missing out on and that got me pondering....why!

We visited a pool that according to our session was fully booked but the pool was empty! This pool normally has slides, waves and rapids but on that day (and apparently for the entire Christmas kids holidays) those features weren't available it was just the swim.

So straight away with the pool being so empty I thought they're loosing a lot of revenue and then with the slides etc being closed how many of those families won't visit again. They obviously had a staff shortage but I did wonder why they hadn't 'borrowed staff' from other venues as they are part of a chain. This same venue had a cafe area that you could sit in but the cafe was closed (during the kids holiday when parents are waiting in the cafe while their kids swim), even if this couldn't be staffed I did wonder why they hadn't rented the space to a catering company who after paying rent (so the venue would have made money) would have made a fortune.

Another place we visited was a farm with a Christmas show/event. The process and layout was fantastic until you wanted food or a drink. There was one cafe with cues out of the door but the coffee hut (situated perfectly right beside the kids play area) was closed! Again I don't know why but from the outside looking in I thought it was a huge opportunity missed again.

This has had me thinking how many missed business opportunities we all miss in our business due to staff shortages, time restrictions, etc and that's after working out if it's financially viable or working out a financially viable way of doing it (like renting the cafe space in the pool).

Sometimes we are so busy working IN our business we don't have time to stop and take a step back and look at our business from an outsiders or customer point of view and look at if there are ways we could be adding more value and charging for it and how we could do that.

I ask you, when was the last time you took a few days out of your business to work ON your business?

To look at where you're going, what you want to achieve over the next 3, 6, 12 months and how you want to achieve that?

Updated your financial forecasts and also took that moment to stop and look at, are there opportunities you are missing out on?