So you decided to go into business for yourself. Well here are twelve critical pointers you will need to succeed in your entrepreneurial venture.
1. Purpose
Very simply stated, you need to know what you want to achieve in life and be willing to go after it.
2. Project
Your business idea that recognizes: a need in the marketplace and involves a product or solution that brings value to the client.
3. Passion
You must possess a strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for something. ou have to want it badly. You have to feel it at a gut level.
4. Planning
Your business plan is the document that summarizes the operational and financial objectives of your business and contains the detailed plans and budgets showing how these objectives are to be realized. It should have the following sections: Executive Summary, The Company, Products and Services, Market Analysis, Competition, Business Strategy and Implementation, Operations, Organization, Financial Analysis, and Supporting Documentation.
5. Product
Your product/service is the thing that brings value to the client. Clients need it and will pay to acquire it and will be happy after they get
the value from it. You need to be able to spell out what it does, what makes it unique and why should people buy it.
6. Prospects
Those people whose needs you take care of and to whom you bring value. You need to learn to think inside their box. You should understand their demographics, their geographics or where they are located, their psychographics or how they think, their behavioristics and their linguistics or the words they use to describe their pain.
7. Pricing
What you will get in exchange for the value you give and still leave that client happy and satisfied, To set the pricing, you need to understand what kind of business you are in. Do you Buy finished goods and wholesale them? Do you resell finished goods at retail? Do you finish goods and sell them? Do you make goods from raw materials and sell them? Do you resell time from a resource? Sell products to be converted for resale by others? Do you sell services or time?
8. Provision
How do you provide the necessary funds – capital -to start up the business and pay the expenses for the first several months. You need to understand the components of your start up costs: Professional fees, brochures, supplies, rent, insurance, raw materials, equipment. You also need to understand the composition od your on-going expenses: rent, salaries, utilities, telephone, depreciation, loan payment and interest, sales and marketing expenses.
9. People
What is your staffing plan. What are your startup needs – include yourself. What is the number and type of people you will need by month for the first year, quarterly or annually for years 2 & 3, How will you compensate them? What benefits they will have and how will you train them? What kind of support network will you build? (lawyers, bankers, accountants, insurance brokers, suppliers, trade associations, SBA. Fed/State/Local Agencies)
10.Promotion
What is the personality of your organization? What is your corporate identity? How do you position your company and what is your message to the marketplace? Your location? Web site name? Storefront? Signage? How do you get publicity:
Remember that: “Marketing is everything you do to promote your business, from the moment you conceive of it to the point at which your customers buy your product or service on a regular basis.”
– Jay Conrad Levinson, Guerilla Marketing
and that: “Advertising is what you do when you can’t see somebody.”
– Fairfax Cone, Foote Cone & Belding Agency
11.Pledge
You pledge to make your clients satisfied. Your clients should be so happy and satisfied that they pledge allegiance to you and your company
12.Persistence
It is said that you have to plan carefully and execute vigorously. Persistence in execution is what make successful entrepreneurs.
