The latest opinions on entrepreneurship from the QU team

Interim Survey Findings

Over the last four weeks, we have invited consultants and SME owners to take part in a business confidence survey.

Whilst the closing date is not scheduled for another three weeks, some stand out themes have already started to emerge. We wanted to share five of the more surprising interim findings with you.

1. Business Optimism

Despite the doom and gloom of inflation, a declining £ and the war in Ukraine, a surprising 66% of respondents stated that they are more optimistic about their business fortunes compared with a year ago.

The top 6 opportunities cited are:

1. Skills gaps
2. AI
3. VR
4. BlockChain
5. Renewable Energy
6. Sustainability

We are wondering whether we attracted a true representation of the business community or are our respondents entrepreneurial outliers?

2. Customer Insight

Post pandemic, customer and employee behaviour has shifted for good. However, less just over 50% of respondents stated that Customer Insight was either very important or critical to the future success of their businesses. Surprisingly, more than 30% of respondents did not collect customer feedback at all.

3. KPIs

The discipline of measuring business performance was only perceived by 17% to be of critical importance to their business success.

• Less than 33% of respondents measure Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
• Only 50% of respondents measure Proposal: Win and Segment/Product profitability

We were left wondering what the cause of such low numbers might be. We will be undertaking more in-depth interviews to dig deeper.

4. Personal Branding

• 100% of respondents stated that a strong personal brand was critically important to their business success.
• 100% of respondents allocated at least one day a month to building their network

However, to our surprise

• only 33% adhere to a weekly blog schedule. 17% never blog at all.
• only 33% had a signature talk of any kind.

There seems to be a significant skills gap here. All respondents are convinced they need to build their personal brands, yet only a small minority are doing so systematically.

5. Innovation

• 83% stated that innovation is of very, or critical importance to their business.
• 66% stated that Diversity and Inclusion is of very, or critical importance.

Our initial 1:1 interviews suggested that the main challenge for small business owners is finding the opportunity to mix with people from different ethnicities and backgrounds.

Are these survey findings anomalous or do you agree? Click on this link to add your insights to the survey.

Better still, we would love to interview you. You can book a slot, by clicking here.