Businesses take off almost every year. A few see the light at the end of the tunnel. Entrepreneurs start off in all earnest, but they do not give enough importance to the importance of prudent planning. You got to be doing the following even before you flag your business off.
Know your target audience: You don’t sell napkins in the blind. Not knowing your target customers can cause a lot more business losses than a spitting out a bad product. Knowing your customers is the core of your entire business strategy. It would be lighthouse for all your marketing efforts.
Bootstrapping: Many entrepreneurs face the problem of not being able to shore up enough seed capital to get started. Some look to woo the venture capitalists, while some of them do the rounds at banks and lending institutions. A few daring ones look fund their businesses with their own savings and then get another job such they could take care of their operating costs. Although it might sound very troublesome and might look like a lot of things on a plate, it would still be the best possible way to start a business without much risk.
Develop a marketing plan: All online business (even the offline ones) ought to have a marketing plan developed. There is simply no excuse for this one. Marketing isn’t something that you ought to be doing when you feel that your sales have hit the abyss or when you have some extra dormant cash lying about your current account. It has to be done systematically and hence one needs to have a solid plan as to what the budget might be every month and what exactly you intend to do to get your word out.
Pre-sell: Business owners spend all their efforts, time and money in trying to set up and launch businesses. Then they try to find customers. Let’s say you are going to start an online business and you had a web-designing company take the project up. While they are at it, what exactly would you be doing? Would you be tapping fingers? Waiting for them to deliver the site back to you? Why? Wouldn’t it be better if you went around the town trying to grab some orders for your product/service? If you could grab orders even before your business was set-up, maybe it could help you.
Get done with the legal work: If your business requires you to register yourself locally or get some patents done or anything else that might involve local government sanctions, you’d better do it much before starts to avoid unnecessary time wasted on mundane paper-work and endless trips to the local chamber of commerce.
Would you like to share your start-up experiences with me? Please feel free to comment.
I am Ashwin. I am a web-consultant, freelance writer, and an entrepreneur. I am also a Certified Behavior Analyst, speaker, and corporate trainer. I am an e-commerce enthusiast and an avid reader. When I am not working (which is rare), I travel around the world just for the sake of traveling.
