Business common sense is essential to hold. Before branding, before hiring, before even uttering the name of your business out loud, you need to hold this in your heart. Without it, you will be at a loss. However, no matter who you are, it’s not hard to see how business common sense can change over the years.
For example, for the longest time, a shop would run off of one very common set of principles. Buy goods in bulk, and sell them for more than you paid. Be reliable, and people will come back. That pretty much describes the ethos of a large percentage of old-time businesses.
However now, fundamental wisdom is still relevant, but has grown. To that extent, starting up even something humble like a shop requires a careful application of your common sense - but of course it’s common sense all the same. With that in mind, considering how this has changed, how the structural dynamics of business sense can echo the times - it’s all worth thinking about.
With that in mind, please consider:
For quite some time, keeping your business secure meant physically. You locked up your business at night. You reported to the police when thefts occurred. You did your best to protect yourself from hiring those with ulterior motives of access. All of that still applies, but now we have the digital space to be wary of. VPN protocols, open systems, remote working policies, they are all absolutely essential and routinely needed to even begin considering work online, and it’s a price we must all pay for the convenience and comfort we share in day-to-day business planning.
PR blunders are so easy to fall into now, and they can happen from so many angles. Before, it might be that your product caused injury, that your advertisement campaign was seen as incorrect, or that you failed to improve your formula over the years. All of those issues can happen today, and regularly do in the corporate field.
However, now, any fool on your team with a Twitter account and heavy vocalized opinions can cause your company to become a target for the online denizens looking for these kinds of slip-ups. On top of that, bad practice can be shared, commented on, and is used to condemn immediately.
To some extent, this is good. It prevents companies from getting away from hypocritical action. For example, many were quick to point out that while supporting social practices, Proctor-Gamble has a reputation of using low-paid labor abroad.
This means it’s essential to keep your structured approach watertight, to arrange a deep personal policy regarding online behavior, and now to treat your employees like powerful ambassadors of your brand. On top of that, taking care of how your reputation develops on sites such as Indeed and Glassdoor can help you ensure that working at your firm is always considered a prize to achieve, not something to disregard or to choose out of pure necessity.
Before, international market access meant registering and promoting your products overseas. It could take days or weeks to process an order. It could be very hard to try and sell your products overseas unless part of a large firm, or unless you had the connections to justify it. Now, you can set up a website to sell a t-shirt to the other side of the world within an hour.
International markets are important to take advantage of. In the online space, you needn’t even market to them particularly, just take a global approach. Calculate the right shipping, figure out how to package and declare the items you wish to send, and go through the right carrier. Within a matter of moments, an order can be dispatched and sent. But this also means learning how to keep your international customer orders fulfilled in a protective format, and to ensure that this access doesn’t necessarily limit your supply. On top of that, you might consider how to sell to more countries than the one you are based in, and how to accept many different currencies and keep your inventory ticking along and logistically moving correctly.
Perhaps the changing common sense here is simply to offer this potential, as for such limited cost, multiplying your potential audience time and time again can feel truly revolutionary.
With these tips, you are certain to apply the structural dynamics of business common sense.
[image source - Pexels]