Focus is the name of the game when it comes to business. Without focus, your business planning is nonexistent, your actions are scattered and your results are below expectations. In fact, your lack of focus may be silently killing your business.

Here are three ways a lack of focus is undermining your business success:

1. Trying to appeal to everyone means appealing to no one. How can you market a product to a teenage boy when you are also trying to appeal to his grandmother or his teacher? You need to have a clearly defined target customer. You should know that customer intimately. Gender, age, race, economic status, employment, and geographic location is just the beginning. You also need to understand that client’s needs, desires, wants, challenges, and lifestyle. Without a detailed picture of your ideal customer, all your sales and marketing will be a struggle.

2. Concentrating on the wrong things can hide the urgent items that will make or break your business. The routine work that is required for keeping a business afloat day-to-day takes up a great deal of time. In fact, it leaves very little time for planning how you are going to grow your business. It prevents you from focusing on your financials. This can let key details slip by without notice. For example, your shipping costs are going up, but you didn’t notice it and failed to adjust your pricing. Within a few weeks, your financials are going to show a growing deficit instead of a profit. Make sure you take the time to focus on the important things.

3. Failing to listen to your customers can wreck your business in no time. Your customers are the heart of your business. Without them, you have no business. Listening to and responding to your customers will give you a measure of how well you are doing. If you start ignoring your customers or don’t respond to their concerns, you are going to turn your customers against you. And that is deadly. Customers have no issues with posting complaints on the Internet. Yelp is only one of several review sites they frequent. If your business starts getting a bad reputation, you will pay for it with fewer customers and a dropping bottom line.

Make business planning and focus a priority in 2015. It will keep your company healthy and your bottom line sound.