Make Your Business Startup A Success By Doing Your Homework
When YOU start your new business startup, YOU want it to be a phenomenal success, but sadly 50% of new businesses fail in the first 3 years.
You don’t want this to be YOU – so START YOUR BUSINESS RIGHT.
There Is a Big Reason For Failure
ONE big reason is the lack of HOMEWORK that is done before a business startup proceeds.
What do I mean by HOMEWORK?
In short, I mean FOUR things:-
- RESEARCH
- UNDERSTAND
- THINK
- PLAN
You Must Research Everything
When YOU start a new business, YOU must RESEARCH heavily literally EVERYTHING to do with your new business. The most important parts are:-
- Your TRADING MARKET & your COMPETITORS
- Your CUSTOMERS
- The PRODUCTS you will sell
- The CUSTOMER SERVICE you should provide
- The PRICES you will buy your PRODUCTS for and the PRICES you will sell them for
- Your MARKETING
- Your BUSINESS NUMBERS
With the RIGHT RESEARCH, YOU should sit down to UNDERSTAND what you have learned and have a good THINK about EVERYTHING. From all this, a good practical BUSINESS PLAN should be created – one that will deliver SUCCESS for your new business.
Understand Your Trading Market
It is important to know everything about the TRADING MARKET that YOU are about to enter – information such as what is the monetary value of the market, is it growing or shrinking and who are the competitors?
Your new business is more likely to be successful, if your trading market is growing and there are not too many competitors; a shrinking market and too many competitors could make it difficult.
Know Your Customers, Your Products & Your Customer Service
Then, YOU need to know who your likely customers are and understand them as fully as possible – such knowledge would allow YOU to understand their needs and wants and what products your business could supply them with.
Your Customer Service is just as important as your products and you need to know what customer service to provide in order to get your products to your customers.
Understand Your Competitors
A good way to learn about your target customers and the products that you should sell is from your likely competitors. If you are to compete effectively against your competitors, you will need to grab many of their customers and sell the same or similar products.
You should look at the target customers and understand who they are. You need to buy some of their products and analyse these closely and understand why these customers buy these products. Finally, you need to look at the customer service offered and look at customer reviews to see what their customers think.
If you are to compete successfully, you need to be much better than your competitors – your products and customer service both need to be excellent. You should look for your competitors’ strengths and try to be much better, but you should also look for their weakness and try to exploit these.
Know Your Prices
Prices are important and you need to learn about the selling prices for the products in the trading market; understand what prices your target customers will pay and whether quality is more important than price, for instance. If quality is more important, this gives you scope to charge higher prices.
Again, you can gather much information on pricing from your competitors but think that it does not always pay to be the cheapest in your market. Many new business startups have accrued a lot of customers and sales by being too cheap, but have failed because there was no profit.
Look At Your Marketing
By knowing your customers and how to reach them through your marketing, YOU can work out how you will market your business. Many new start-ups fall into the trap of spending a lot on advertising that does not work and this often drains their resources.
Try to do as much free marketing as you can – online social media marketing is a must along with a good website and try to get free PR marketing by telling the media about you and getting them to spread the news.
Know Your Numbers
Your numbers are really important & you must research and understand these – remember 50% of new start-ups fail because they don’t make enough money for a profit; their numbers go wrong – your numbers are important.
You must research what your likely sales, gross profit and costs will be. Then, YOU should create a realistic projected profit and loss projection for the first year or so and see what your profit is likely to be and when your startup will make money; ideally you want to make a profit within the first six months.
The quicker you can make a profit the better, so try to aim to become profitable almost immediately.
Create A Simple Business Plan
When your RESEARCH is complete and YOU feel you fully understand EVERYTHING, YOU should put a simple BUSINESS PLAN together and ideally get a business coach or mentor to review it for YOU; a critical review should highlight your strengths and weaknesses.
The better your plan, the better your chances of success.
Then Put Your Plan Into Action
When YOU are happy with your plan and when YOU are ready to start, YOU should LAUNCH your business – don’t just start it, however, but LAUNCH it under a blaze of publicity!
So many new start-ups start with a whimper & they never really get going and fail very quickly.
Summary
By RESEARCHING very heavily and very comprehensively EVERYTHING within your new business, YOU will be able to UNDERSTAND your business FULLY, before YOU actually START.
YOU should then use some quality THINKING on how your business will be moulded and how it will RUN and put this into a PLAN.
Once and, only once, YOU are READY TO START your business, YOU should ACT and get started BY LAUNCHING your new business.
Be A Success
Too often businesses START with only a fraction of the RESEARCH and UNDERSTANDING that is needed for success. WRONG THINKING and PATCHY PLANNING then follows and the business has a POOR START. These businesses then struggle for the early months or years before eventually FAILING.
If YOU are STARTING A NEW BUSINESS, YOU should take your time and only OPEN when YOU are READY.
HAVE SMART BUSINESS THINKING, SMART BUSINESS ACTIONS
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