Tag Archives: Potential Customers

Business Development, Business Strategy

Opening a Small Business – Top 7 Steps to Success

Opening a small business is both challenging and rewarding (if you do it right). It takes a lot of planning, organizing and drive. There is no guarantee for business success but certain things you do will increase your opportunity for success.

To-Do List for Opening a Small Business:

1. How do you want to structure your business? Do you want to set up as a sole proprietorship, or in a partnership or do you want to incorporate your company and limit your liability? These are questions you need to answer before you startup your business. Talk to your local government small business agency; they can help you investigate what option best fits you and your business. Before you make your decision, ask for legal advice and tax advice; talk to a business lawyer and a tax accountant.

2. Once you’ve decided what your business structure will be, you will need to create a business plan. First, develop a business plan outline that includes the areas of a plan that are specific to your business or your industry. For example, if you are planning to go into manufacturing you will need to build an operations plan, a new product development plan, your human resources plan (including a workforce plan) and safety checklist plan; include your capital expenditures budget. The objective is to focus your plan on the manufacturing aspects that are unique to your business. Other businesses with an inventory focus, or retail focus, or services focus will need to adapt the plan to be specific to their needs. All businesses will need to include your long term mission and vision statements, your business goals and objectives, a marketing plan, sales plan, business financials plan, exit plan, business continuity plan and the business strategies necessary to be successful.

3. The next step is to do a financial analysis of your business idea and business plan. Can you make a profit (and once you’ve earned a profit, can you maximize your profit) in your business? How long will it take to make a profit? Can you fund your business growth and survive until you make a profit? What are your cash flow needs and projections? Will cash flow management be a struggle? Can you finance the business and survive?

  • Your objective in conducting a business financial analysis for opening a small business is to be realistic. Do not under-estimate your costs and over-estimate your sales. Develop a list of expected startup costs. For example, startup costs might include your legal and accounting costs to set up your business; a business license fee, furniture, computer hardware and software, property insurance; trade-marking your product (if applicable); inventory and/or materials; and more.
  • Once you’ve identified your startup costs, develop a list of your other expenses (from daily expenses to annual expenses). For example, business space rent, your monthly utilities (such as heat, phone, etc.), membership in trade associations, office supplies, contract employees, wages and benefits (including yours if you expect to take a salary out of the business). For simplicity, put all the data into a spreadsheet and verify that you haven’t forgotten anything (check out online examples income statements – they show expenses and revenue).
  • The next step in your financial analysis is to do a sales forecast for the same period as the expenses (usually banks or other lenders want to see a three year plan in annual increments and a monthly cash flow plan for the three years). Make sure to include the assumptions you are using in your sales plan and in your financial plan (for example, interest rates, dollar exchange rates, gross domestic product rates, political environment, and more).
  • Put together a worst case scenario (expenses high, sales low); a best case scenario (expenses low, sales high) and an average case scenario (expenses and sales on target). Test the sensitivity of your projections. What would happen to your financials if you didn’t ‘win’ a large account? What would happen to your financials if your key supplier increased the cost of materials by 12%? Make sure you have a plan to address those issues.
  • Try to find industry information that will support your financial plans and include them in the financial section. For example, talk to your industry’s association and see if they can provide average data for financial ratios, revenues, costs, salaries, benefits, etc. within your industry. Compare that data to your financial plan and see if you are ‘in range’; if you are not, you will need a good explanation for the variance.
  • Run your financials: total your expenses (outgoing) and your sales revenues (incoming). According to your financials, will you lose money or make it? If you are losing money in your plan, how much are you losing? And how much cash do you need to survive before your plan starts showing a profit? Be realistic.

4. Now consider where you are going to get your startup financing from. Are you independently wealthy? Have you won a lottery? No? Then you need to borrow money or find a way to get some cash to startup. Traditional methods of financing a startup business are bank business loans, government loan programs, borrowing from family and friends, selling a share of the business to a partner who will invest in the business, and re-mortgaging your home. Less traditional methods (also known as bootstrapping), are using personal credit cards, selling assets, such as your car, furniture, your house; continuing on in your day job or taking a second job for additional income. If you believe in the business you want to start, you will find a way. Choose the lowest risk, the best value and the lowest cost financing for your business startup. But be realistic; it can be very difficult to do this. If your business cannot succeed or if you over-inflate sales and under-forecast expenses, you will go out of business and likely owe a lot of money to a lot of people.

5. If the decision is to proceed with your plan for opening a small business, and you obtain the necessary financing, then you must now focus on your product or service plan. Define your service or product. What differentiates it from other services or products? Where is the product or service in its life-cycle; in the introductory, growth, mature or declining phase? How will you position your product or service in the market? Develop your service or product plan and then define your marketing mix for your service or product. Focus on the features and benefits of the product or service. Develop your pricing strategy. Develop a strong promotional program. Define how you will get your product or service to the market (ensure that if your product is inventory-based, that you have enough inventory before starting up).

6. Ensure that you plan your workforce needs and hire the employees needed to open your new business and consider the advantages of outsourcing, particularly in the early days of startup when you might not need full time employees.

7. Finally, open your new business and launch your product or service. Use your promotional program to support the launch. Measure your results continually. Talk to customers and potential customers. What do they like or dislike about doing business with you? Is the product or service meeting their needs? If not, why not? Do this research even if the products are flying off the shelves, you want to know what customers are thinking at all times; the good and the bad.

For more in-depth tips on starting up a small business, please visit Opening A Small Business. For more small business advice on managing, planning, pricing, strategy, money, networking, and people – all areas a small business owner needs to understand, please visit http://www.more-for-small-business.com Kris Bovay is the owner of Voice Marketing Inc., a business and marketing services company. Kris has more than 25 years experience in successfully managing and leading large, medium and small businesses; businesses that she has worked with have grown by more than 30% in sales in the first two years. Use Kris’ experience to help you manage and lead your business. Copyright 2008 Voice Marketing Inc.

 

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Kris_Bovay/216730

 

 

 

 

Business Development, Business Strategy

Why is Selling So Difficult For Small Business Owners? Use These 3 Sales Management Strategies

Why is selling so difficult for small business owners? The ability to sell is necessary for every business yet it is often a neglected activity. To simplify the selling process, you need to build a sales approach into your marketing mix program. (Your marketing mix includes product, price, promotion and place – the sales activities belong in the promotion category.)

First, it is important to understand the marketing mix promotion category. Marketing promotion includes personal selling (face to face), direct mail marketing (one-to-one and via email or mail), and use of telemarketing campaigns (one-to-one and via telephone). Additionally, marketing promotion includes the advertising (for example, radio, newspapers, internet, magazines, storefront, and more), promotions (for example, trade shows, coupons, contests, point of purchase displays and more), and public relations (for example, press releases, community involvement, and more) activities.

Second, it is important to build a sales plan targeted to each product or service category, and also focused on each type of customer. If you are entering new markets, use sales contact management and sales leads software to focus your efforts. This software will also provide good sales service maintenance and follow-up support. Business process management tools help you to focus your sales activities and provide you with valuable time saving tactics. You can track and manage your activity and results for leads, prospects, and customers. You can also integrate your sales leads software with your sales management software to develop reports on customer purchases, service or product launches, price change impacts, service or product change impacts, and more.

Third, develop strong negotiating and closing skills. Always look for a win/win solution both for you and your customer. Make sure you focus on the unique value and benefits of your products and/or services and how that value will benefit your customer (solving their needs or problems). To negotiate a sale and to close a sale effectively requires a specific skill set. You need to be a very good listener and really hear what your customer is saying. You also need to be sincere – how many times have you heard pre-rehearsed closes that just turn you off? You can practice your close but when you are in front of a potential customer make sure that you can close based on what your customer just told you, what you heard, and what you believe you can deliver – in effect, how will you fulfill your customer’s needs more effectively than other suppliers?

To be successful in business, you need to either be successful at selling or be able to hire a great sales person because no matter what you have to sell (product, service, idea or something else), you will have to sell it to someone. Learning how to sell effectively is possible but you need to enjoy it. If you dread the idea of selling, don’t do it (your customers can perceive your discomfort and you will find it even harder to make the sale). Hire someone who loves to sell to do it for you (you can hire an employee, or sales agent, or contract worker, or broker but it is likely that employees will be most committed to you and your business). Customers and potential customers will resist buying from someone who isn’t comfortable with the sales process, and while you might get some orders, hiring someone who is good at selling will free you up to do what you’re good at… a much more effective use of your time and resources.

Overcome the challenge of developing small business sales skills:

  • learn to focus on developing a marketing mix promotion that includes building service or product differentiation and positioning features and benefits that help you to increase sales successfully;
  • learn to build an effective sales plan and use software and business process tools to help you manage the plan;
  • make sure you develop strong negotiating and closing skills and
  • learn how to manage your own efforts, or the efforts of others.

Learning how to sell effectively is of critical importance to your small business sales growth; and just as important is recognizing when to hire someone to do the selling for you.

Kris Bovay is the owner of Voice Marketing Inc, a business and marketing services company. Kris has 25 years of experience in leading large, medium and small businesses; including developing successful sales plans and strategies.

You can find more strategies on how to sell on the More For Small Business website: specifically business to business selling and business to consumer selling strategies. Copyright 2010 Voice Marketing Inc.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Kris_Bovay/216730

 

 

 

 

 

 

MyOrbit Blogs

How to Start a Coffee Shop or Coffee Business

So you’ve decided to get into the World of Coffee! Coffee can provide a multitude of opportunities and can also apply to anyone wanting to start up a Sandwich Bar, Cafe or Deli. Infact anyone wanting to open any business that features Coffee. Many types of business serve coffee these days, with either a Traditional Espresso Machine or automatic Bean to Cup Machine. Bookshops, Bicycle Shops, Motor Cycle Dealers to name but a few. Any business that attracts like minded people who share common interests is a great place to start a Coffee Shop. It gives people the chance to socialise and talk about their shared interests. This business diversification also provides an additional income for these businesses that are not “out and out” Coffee Shops.

Like any business that people want to start up, it’s usually because they have an interest in some element of their chosen business idea. It’s always a good idea to do something you like doing or have a skill at, otherwise what’s the point? However, just because you have a “passion” and a dream of setting up your own Coffee Shop doesn’t mean that it will be automatically successful. The same rules apply for any business – Doesn’t matter how good your idea is, you need to make sure there is a “need” in your town or geographic area. This research will form part of your “Business Plan”. A business plan is more than just putting a few figures together to get finance. “Your Business Plan” is just that. It’s about getting your thoughts and ideas down on paper and creating a plan of action for business research, marketing research, project managing and forecasts for getting your business open. It should also be business planning for the future to make sure you stay open! There is an old saying in business; “If You Fail to Plan You Plan to Fail”. It’s a known fact that a large proportion of new businesses fail within the first 3 Years.

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