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Mohammed Shabeeb argued in a Gulf Times column that many business owners apply differing explanations to their sales results depending on whether performance is strong or weak. According to the column, fund manager Peter Lynch said it best when he observed, “Losers take the credit in the good times and then blame the market in the bad times. Winners take responsibility regardless of the outcome.” Shabeeb applied the investor insight to business owners, noting that they explain rising sales through their strategy and vision while attributing declines to external factors such as soft markets or competitors.
The columnist, also national director of BNI Qatar and GCC director for ActionCOACH business coaching, maintained that both accounts cannot hold simultaneously and that neither typically reflects reality. Most owners lack clarity on the actual drivers of their revenue, leading them to take credit in favourable periods and assign blame externally during challenges, the column stated. This pattern prevents the majority of businesses from achieving sustained growth because it substitutes self-awareness with convenient narratives.
In the article, Shabeeb drew on the methodology of Brad Sugars, the founder of ActionCOACH, which identifies five universal levers that determine a business’s revenue and profit. Those levers comprise the volume of leads generated, the rate at which those leads convert to customers, the average number of transactions each customer makes, the typical sale value and the resulting profit margin. Sugars’ framework shows that a 10 percent improvement across all five levers compounds to produce roughly 46 percent higher revenue and around 61 percent more profit, the column explained.
Figures from the US Chamber of Commerce place insufficient marketing strategy among factors in 22 percent of business failures. CB Insights research into startup post-mortems identified poor marketing as a cited reason in 14 percent of cases. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows nearly half of startups fail within five years.
Shabeeb emphasised that marketing constitutes an entire system for consistently turning strangers into profitable customers rather than a collection of tactics such as advertising alone. The column advised owners to accept responsibility for their results, which enables them both to explain downturns and to engineer recoveries by adjusting the controllable levers. Business leaders should begin this week by selecting and measuring just one lever, moving it deliberately before advancing to the others, according to the piece.
