Missed Business Opportunities: When Saying 'No' Impacts Growth

​In the lifecycle of a small business, there are more choices that an owner will have to make than they can remember. So, when an owner decides not to take on a large new revenue opportunity, does it leave a lasting mark? They say luck is when opportunity meets preparation — do you have what it takes to make your own luck?

When Opportunity Comes Knocking...

We’ve worked with many innovative entrepreneurs who have brought creative products to the market, but when a new business opportunity isn’t pursued, it may not feel like a tragedy at first.
Let’s imagine a small business owner, Evelyn, the Entrepreneur. Evelyn has been slowly growing her company in a competitive market, securing small new contracts here and there. Prior to starting her own business, Evelyn worked at Larger Company, which is currently her number one competitor and a more established player in the market. Evelyn finally lands her biggest opportunity yet and gets the chance to pitch her product to Mega Manufacturing, a large global company. If Mega decides to buy from her, it could boost her sales by nearly 50%!
When it appears that Evelyn is poised to win the business, terms are discussed. Although the profit margin on the new business with Mega is the same as for the rest of Evelyn’s customer base, Mega’s standard payment terms are net 75 days. Evelyn has had a few profitable years under her belt, but she just doesn’t have the cash to make this work.

...Are You Ready to Answer?

Without the cash flow to support the new sales, Evelyn makes the tough decision to turn down the Mega business opportunity, and Mega is left to go with the less innovative but still worthy product sold by her competitor, Larger Co. As a more established company, Larger Co. can handle the extended payment terms, and they continue to grow their market share.
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Evelyn carries on in her niche, continuing to innovate, but never really breaks through or gains more market share. She makes a nice living for herself and her team, but was never able to ultimately grab that brass ring.

The Reality of Lost Opportunities

So here is the thing: It isn’t a big deal. Evelyn takes a pass on her big opportunity. No jobs were lost. It’s true—Large Co. hired a dozen new employees to support the Mega contract, expanded into additional product lines, and grew the relationship significantly. But nobody got hurt.

Evelyn still runs a nice company. Sometimes, she thinks about the sale she lost to Mega, especially when she tries to reach out and pitch them the latest version of her product. Overall, though, it was a bump in the road, and Evelyn carries on nicely.
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Some might look at this scenario and wonder why she was complacent, or why Evelyn ever left Larger Co in the first place if she wasn’t going to go out and do something big. Maybe she just didn’t know how to get it done. Maybe she was told by her bank when she presented them with the opportunity from Mega that historic cash flows did not support the line of credit she needed. Maybe she was told that such a sales concentration would be too risky. Maybe her bank didn’t know about Prairie.

Prairie Business Credit Makes Sure You're Ready to Say 'Yes'

It would be nice if the entrepreneurs who couldn’t figure out how to take on that new customer still ended up with a nice (although boring) outcome like Evelyn. But, they don’t. Sometimes they can’t take on that new customer and the business slowly falls into obscurity, losing little bits of market share here and there. Other times, the business fails.

Over the past 32 years, we’ve been helping entrepreneurs take on that new customer and avoid missing business opportunities. Sometimes the outcome is something to behold. We’ve seen:
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• The company goes from Prairie borrower, to bank borrower, to bank trust customer.
• The company goes from Prairie borrower, more than doubling revenues, selling for 3x the valuation of the company prior to working with Prairie.
• The company goes from the bank’s “naughty list”, to fulfilling the first of its kind, proof of concept contract, launching it to a successful public offering.

When you’ve had the privilege of providing the funding that played a part in those types of outcomes, you can’t help but be a little sad when you hear about the sale that didn’t happen. If only we had known.

So if you want to be ready to say yes to your next opportunity, don't let FOMO—or funding—hold you back. Give us a call today.

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