Millions of entrepreneurs start businesses and succeed every year while millions of others start and fail. The difference between the failures and the successes lies in what the entrepreneurs do every day, and what they have before they start their venture. You need a good building and good marketing skills, but is that all? Below are five things you need to succeed.
1. Needs and Pain Points
Are you starting a business because you have the capital or because you can see needs and paint points a business can solve? The easiest way to discover the needs of the community is to be in that community. For instance, most successful entrepreneurs have been in the industries they invested in for many years, and that helps them know what is missing and how they can offer a solution. While working in an industry, you can identify a need and verify it with ease.
Some business ideas are fun, but if no one needs the products or services, your business will die before it celebrates the first anniversary. If most people need a service, you have a need, and with a need comes a business.
2. Experience
If you decide to offer steel buildings today (to meet a need), you need experience in these type of buildings. Understanding the industry, the products or services, and the customers is an easy way to avoid challenges along the way. Your experiences help you create a team of credible professionals, approach investors and even attract clients.
If you lack the skills and experience, you need a mentor who will walk you through the journey.
3. Resources
Whether you are just starting or you are already established, every business needs resources to succeed. If you do not have the needed funds, your business will sink. There are so many other resources you need including employees, mentors, equipment, software, and so many more.
You can improvise for the resources you do not have to ensure your business kickstarts and keep going. For instance, you can work from home before renting office space and use free software. You can outsource some work once in a while before you have enough to hire employees. You can also trade your skills for office equipment or engage in any other form of barter trade as long as it brings you the resources you need. You need to establish the basic resources your commercial business needs to keep going and get them.
4. Unending Stream of Customers
Every business needs customers for their products and services. Some new businesses have ready customers waiting to buy by the time they launch, but others have to wait for long. Even after the launch, you still need to keep marketing to get new customers and retain the existing ones. When you create your business around a need, you will always have customers. However, you still need a good marketing strategy to ensure that the customers keep coming.
If you are creating a new business, selling products or services prior to the launch date is a great idea. If you have an existing business, you need to develop new marketing strategies to reach out to new customers. If you cannot find new customers for your products or services, you need to let the business idea go.
5. Sound Business Model
Your business model kickstarts your business and keeps it going for a long time. Before and after launching your commercial business, your business model should guide you on sources of business finance, sources of revenue, products and services prices, operating costs, gross margin, and profit margin among others.
Your business model needs to answer questions such as:
• What’s my target audience?
• What’s the market price for my products or services?
• What’s the cost of production?
• What profit do you get from every product?
• How much will you spend running the business?
Answering these questions will help you understand where the business is heading and what you might need to do to improve and get more returns. For an existing business, the solution to a defective business model might be increasing sources of revenue (say target new customers).
Conclusion
Like everything else, a good business needs a good plan. Start by developing a good business plan to launch the business right. After that, you need to create strategies to help you run your business right.
