11 Ways You Could Be Self-Sabotaging Your Business

Here’s a quick question to ask yourself - Are you losing business unnecessarily?
(Spoiler alert - the answer is almost certainly, yes, even if you don’t think so!)

Working in a variety of different industries in different capacities is a great way to grow and develop professionally and as a person as it exposes you to lots of different approaches to business.

However, one thing that is fairly consistent - every business (even our own) has, at some point, demonstrated instances of avoidable “self-sabotage”.

In this article we will share:

• What self-sabotage is in business
• Causes of self-sabotage
• Examples of common self-sabotage issues to be aware of
• An example of when self-sabotage might be OK

What Is Self-Sabotage in the Context of Business?

Whilst there’s no formal definition, self-sabotage in business could be defined as:

“Any item, action or experience which intentionally or unintentionally, has an avoidable, negative impact on the business”.

Self-sabotage can occur in any department. However, it is especially prevalent in marketing and customer service activities.

An Example of Self-Sabotage

Imagine the following scenario; you’ve just spent a week working hard with your team at a major UK exhibition. It was a huge investment for your company costing thousands of pounds. You and your team have spoken with hundreds of different people.

However, post-event, you find yourself disappointed with low conversion rates. Why?

Well, what you didn’t realise at the time is that whilst your team were all busy talking with lots of people…. they hadn’t actually identified if those people were the right people to spend time talking with. As a result, they effectively wasted time trying to sell your product to people who were never going to convert in the first place.

For anyone who has attended a trade show, you’ve probably experienced this first-hand, when an overzealous salesperson has continued trying to sell you a product you have no interest in, even if you’ve already expressed that to them. They’re so focused on their needs, they totally miss out on listening to yours.

Top Causes of Self-Sabotage

Whilst there are many different and nuanced causes, we can categorise most into one or more of the following:

• Laziness
• Poor planning
• Poor processes or record-keeping
• Procrastination
• Lack of knowledge
• Excessive workloads
• Poor customer service (often as a result of one or more of the above)

How To Avoid Self-Sabotage

No-one likes to admit when they’ve shot themselves in the foot (and potentially wasted valuable marketing budgets in the process), but being able to correctly identify a moment of self-sabotage is the first and most important step in being able to address it. And, it helps us grow as people. 

Being honest with ourselves and others is also key. Time and time again, self-sabotage persists due to a reluctance to acknowledge or address the root cause.

So without further ado, here are some of the most common examples of self-sabotage, along with some tips to help you avoid them.

1. Lack of Follow Up

This - frustratingly - is one of the most common forms of self-sabotage, and yet it is also one of the most avoidable and one of the easiest to solve. Quite simply, it’s when you should follow up and don’t.

When you think about it - it’s bonkers. 

You’ve spent time and money on marketing your business; whether that be via traditional advertising in newspapers or leaflets, or digital marketing such as search engine optimisation or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Someone has then contacted you to find out more, or even hire you or buy your product….. Great!

And then you don’t get back to them.

That’s insane, right? And yet it’s something everyone reading this article can probably relate to.

In fact, this “Sales effectiveness” report by Conversica has some fascinating statistics. They arranged for a secret shopper to contact 100 mid-market and enterprise-level companies by expressing interest in their products or services and requesting to be contacted for more information.

• 25% of the companies had no option to send an inquiry via their website
• 25% did not respond to the inquiry at all

2. Make It Easy for People To Contact You

It seems like this would be an obvious one, but you’ll be surprised how many sites insist you contact them via a certain method. Worse still - some big brands, such as Facebook, generally don’t want people to contact them, and so will intentionally make it close to impossible to find any points of contact.

Unless you're Facebook - do the opposite. Ensure every page on your website has, at the very least, your phone number and email address in either the footer or header sections. 

Don’t force people to just use one method because it’s the one that suits you best.

For extra brownie points, you can use your contact form’s “Thank You” page, or an auto-reply for emails, to display your opening times and confirm typical call-back timeframes. For example, if you normally call back within 15 mins, and someone has just sent you a message 1hr after you stopped work for the day, this instantly helps manage expectations, and they’ll know that you’re likely to call them back first thing on the next working day. It may sound like a small thing, but that transparency in terms of reply time frame can sometimes lead to people refraining from reaching out to competitors until they’ve given you time to reply.

3. Not Making It Easy For People To Buy From You

If you have an eCommerce site then this one is especially for you. There are lots of barriers which eCommerce sites can put in the way of customers, ultimately resulting in lost sales, but one of the most common causes of abandonment is no “guest checkout” option.

Each year, the average cart abandonment rate in the UK typically sits around 70 to 75%, with forced account creation accounting for between 22% to 37% (depending on the study/source), although most recent data is only available for USA markets.

In fact, Amazon* famously demonstrated how forcing users to create an account was costing them a lot of moneycreate an account; and that it all came down to just one word - “Register”.

4. Not Treating Leads With Sufficient Urgency

For small businesses with limited resources (there’s less of an excuse for larger brands), we know how hard it can be juggling all of the demands for your time, to the extent that new business enquiries can sometimes be the last thing you want! 

However, with the ever-growing use of online reviews and speed-of-reply being utilised as a ranking factor in certain platforms, it is of vital importance that you reply in a timely manner.  

Whilst the actual insights vary, studies typically show that:

• Between 50% to 70% of sales typically go to the company who responds first
• Leads that are contacted within the first 5 minutes, are 20 times more likely to convert, than those contacted after 30 minutes.

The sooner you reply, the less likely it is that a potential customer will need to reach out to one of your competitors.

5. Assuming People Know Who You Are, or What You Do

One of the great things about working within a digital agency is the wide array of different clients and industries that we get to work with. As a result, it would be fair to say that all of the team would regard themselves as being both generally tech savvy, and also good at quickly learning about different clients.

However, every now and then we will encounter a website (not always that of a potential client; it may be as a result of general browsing or competitor research for our clients) which leaves us genuinely scratching our heads, trying to figure out exactly what it is that a company does. In most cases, the problem is that the brand has opted for so much “marketing speak” and “corporate jargon” that any real meaning or value has been lost.

Never assume everyone knows who you are or what you do. 

6. Lack of Information

Take a look at the following image, and see if you can work out:

• What it is
• What the benefits are
• Is it relevant or of interest to you

How did you get on? If you answered “not a clue” then you wouldn’t be the only one. 

Now take a look at the following screenshot for the same product on another website… 

Which would you buy from?

It would be easy for the site owners of the first site, or the manufacturer of the product) to look at sales figures and assume that any underperformance is as a result of the product; but is it really? This is a great example of self-sabotage… especially if the site owner hasn’t realised the problem exists. It’s also why it’s so important to test your site, and listen to user feedback but we’ll touch on each of those later in this article.

OK - so could the Chewy example be made better? 

Ultimately, yes; adding a video of the product in use would increase that page’s ability to rank for enhanced video snippets in search engines, and would increase conversions further. 

Now, in fairness, this (in isolation) isn’t necessarily an example of self-sabotage. However, if someone (either externally or internally) has suggested adding a video and explained the benefits of doing so, and for whatever reasons, the person receiving the feedback failed to consider it or pass the feedback onto the relevant team for consideration, then that is an example of self-sabotage.

So sometimes self-sabotage can have an element of nuance.

Here’s another example:

Would you book at this restaurant? We’ll come back to this one in the next section.

7. Lack of Testing

Let us return to the “Happy” example above for a moment as it’s a great example of when you can have multiple instances of self-sabotage occur in a single instance. 

We saw this exact screen whilst choosing from a selection of restaurants for this year’s BYB Christmas work party. Of the 5-6 restaurants we looked at, theirs was the only website that didn’t work properly and didn’t include a menu. Guess whose site very nearly didn’t get our vote!

We say nearly, because they ultimately did - which led to them winning the team vote by one.

(Update: Happy subsequently lost our business - what a rollercoaster ride of self-sabotage it was! More on that later)

We were curious why and how an established brand with multiple locations could fail to provide such an important piece of information as a menu. Their whole business revolves around it!

Upon exploring the code, it revealed that the site ONLY displays the menu IF you accept cookies! In fact, it wasn’t just the menu - most of the site content only rendered after cookies were accepted.

According to a security survey by Thales in 2023, around 56% of participants said they always accept cookies. That means that 44% includes a mix of people who may or may not accept cookies, and those who reject them by default. As a result, a significant proportion of Happy’s potential customers may not see the menu, and will “bounce”  (leave the website and head to a competitor's site).

Unless you’re aware of the problem, it would be natural to assume people have all of the information they need, and therefore, have chosen not to purchase or book for another reason. However, would you book the restaurant based on the above?

It looks like they’ve subsequently “sort of” fixed the issue for the time being, as now they set cookies by default even if you reject them…. but that’s a whole different topic.

8. Poor Customer Service

Oh dear “Happy” - this wasn’t a great month!

So, as mentioned above, despite the technical hurdles which we were able to overcome ourselves, they initially won the team vote by one. But unfortunately the story doesn’t end there.

Unfortunately a catalogue of errors with our booking and really poor customer service led us to losing confidence in their ability to deliver, so we cancelled our booking and switched to another restaurant.

The frustrating thing is - all of the issues could have been easily avoided with the correct processes, correct training, and correct communication procedures in place.

(We should just pause for a moment and flag that we hadn’t intended to single out ‘Happy’ in this article - it just happens to be a timely example which occurred whilst it was being written, and highlights beautifully how one brand can suffer from many of the self-sabotage examples discussed in this article. It also highlights that large established businesses are just as likely, if not more so, to experience self-sabotage.)

9. Lazy Customer Service

Lazy customer service has been given its own section because it is rife, and deserves its own special attention. 

Sometimes your customer service training, processes, and the bulk of your team may be exceptional, but could be let down by one or two bad apples. Conversely, in some companies the staff are treated so badly that laziness is a result of staff frustration. Apathy sets in, and the customers ultimately pay the price.

To provide an example; We recently encountered a bug on a website which prevented me from being able to view an entire category of products. Rather than simply go elsewhere, we reached out to them via chat.

After jumping through multiple hoops in their chatbot, we eventually managed to speak with a person. The problem was explained and what impact it was having on the ability to actually view and buy certain products from them. They couldn’t have been less interested if they tried. 

Now; in an ideal world, what would have been nice to have seen was either that:

• they had the ability to fix the issue themselves, or
• they demonstrated they:
  • understood the problem, 
  • were grateful for me taking time out to let them know, and 
  • advised they’d be sending it to the dev. team to look into
  • Bonus points would have been awarded for them offering to get back in touch when the issue had been resolved!

In contrast, this person did none of that. To begin with, they suggested we look for another category of product instead. That’s a bit like a sales person asking a customer who was looking for a car if they’d like to buy a motorbike instead.

Begrudgingly, they then offered a couple of other very weak and not very useful ideas. 

The problem in each case was:

• None of the solutions were really viable for fixing the issue for me in that instance, PLUS,
• Left the core issue unresolved, which meant anyone else experiencing the issue would have suffered a similar fate

Ultimately the problem was that they either:

• hadn’t really understood the problem, and couldn’t be bothered to clarify, 
• didn’t care about the impact it was having on the company in terms of lost revenue
• didn’t want the hassle of having to deal with something which didn’t fall within their scripted responses 

And the end result? Leaving the chat not only left us with a very negative view of the company, but also without being able to buy their product despite wanting it.

10. Make Positive Use Of Negative Customer Feedback

Negative customer feedback is invaluable, and whilst it is important to minimise the root causes, smart companies will 100% listen to it when it is offered.

Too many people feel “negative” feedback is something to be ignored or defended against. However, the fact that someone has given up their time to share a frustrating experience with you, should be taken as an opportunity. 

In fact, every time a customer reaches out to share feedback, raise a complaint, or offer a suggestion you should use it as a valuable opportunity to see if you can improve and ultimately strengthen your brand, your product, and your position in relation to your competitors. And don’t apply that just for direct communication. Feedback provided via public means such as via reviews, social media, etc are just as insightful and valuable. 

Choosing to ignore customer feedback or give it the time and respect it often deserves, is another yet example of self-sabotage.

11. Not Listening to What People Are Actually Telling You

Let’s return to our trade show example from earlier in the article, as this is a problem many of us will have experienced first-hand - “trying to sell to the wrong audience”.

Picture the scene: a trade show with a very luxurious stand with a Point of Sale (POS) system provider. 

However, as soon as you look, you are pounced on by a member of their events team asking if you are interested in what they offered. You politely explained that you have an eCommerce business and so have no need for a store POS system.

That’s where attempts to sell really should have stopped. 

They don’t. Instead, they spend the next 10 minutes trying their hardest to sell the benefits of a system you don’t need. You try several times to politely escape but with no avail. So desperate are they to get their needs across, they totally fail to acknowledge or understand yours.

When Is It OK to Self Sabotage?

Under normal circumstances, the following would have been a great example of bad marketing and self-sabotage for a number of reasons:

• It was delivered door-to-door in Didcot, which meant it went to thousands of residential addresses which weren’t their target audience
• Would have been time consuming to fully implement
• It’s super basic (it doesn’t even include any images) - Most of their target audience will be buying from the likes of Staples, Rymans, or Viking Direct etc, and so most of their target audience would expect a full colour brochure
• There’s not even any branding

However…. This was not received under normal circumstances. This was received  just before the first UK lockdown hit (on 17th March 2020, and the 1st lockdown was implemented on 23rd March 2020).

This company correctly identified that:

• Lockdown was coming and that meant there was a potential opportunity amongst the mayhem
• Their target audience would be working from home - NOT at the addresses they most likely had in their mailing lists. Therefore, they understood that their entire target audience had effectively moved to residential addresses!
• The needs of their target market had changed. Many wouldn’t have had home offices before Covid hit, and this is why they’ve highlighted “Furniture”, “Seating” and “Computing” instead of consumables such as “Paper”
• Speed was of the essence as it had to be completed before the lockdown commenced. Trying to print and distribute full brochures would have not only been costly and too labour intensive, it would have resulted in a lot of wastage  

At any other time, this would have been a great example of self-sabotage…., but at this specific moment of time - it was great to see, and an example of a really switched on marketer who probably had to move really fast to make this happen.

So In Summary:

• Present your best self
• Don’t assume people know what you do
• If people have to ask… they probably won’t
• Make it easy for clients or customers to contact you
• Listen to what people are telling you
• Follow up
• Welcome negative feedback
• Take action on feedback - don’t just bin it
• Don’t be lazy
• Ensure you have the best team, and provide them with the training and tools they need to succeed.

Are You Self-Sabotaging Your Business?

Getting a fresh set of eyes on your business provides an invaluable opportunity to spot weaknesses which your customers may see every day but you and your teams may have learnt to work around and have therefore become blind to.

If your marketing isn’t performing as well as you would like, then as part of our SEO and PPC services, we perform a range of checks to help identify weaknesses and opportunities. More often than not, these are plain for all to see but require a fresh set of eyes to raise them clearly.

Contact our team today on 01993 835432 to learn more about how we work and how we can help you grow your business to the next level.

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