Anyone is able to start his/her own business despite any personal difficulties each one may have. The problem is that not everyone will begin from the same point. Some may already have more money than others, more knowledge or more skills. We could argue that life is a race. Yes, people with those characteristics have a competitive advantage over you, but you can still win the race. Setting up a business requires a lot of effort and dedication. It also requires intelligence and making the right moves, just like in a chess game.
Setting up a successful business requires a few simple steps. First you need to:
Find a need in the market that is not satisfied, Create a product, or service, to satisfy the specific need, Promote the product, or service, to make people aware of its existence, Find and manage people who will undertake the operations of the business and finally, Be creative and innovative in every step.
Finding unsatisfied needs will require market research. Research will allow you to get to know your audience better, thus offering the right product with the right attributes. The most vital point in this step is to concentrate on a niche product, a product where competition is low and demand is relatively high. When people have a need that nobody is offering a service for, they will usually be prepared to pay a high price for it. The same concept goes with monopolies, people in need of the specific product or service will have no other choice to buy from the monopolist, no matter how high the price is, simply because they cannot buy the product or service from anywhere else.
Next, you need to generate product or service ideas that will satisfy targeted needs. Pay attention on the attributes of the product or service that will best satisfy targeted consumers. Attributes that are useless toward a targeted need should be eliminated, thus decreasing your production costs. For example, let us consider the computer industry. Let us say that the niche we want to focus on is performance computers. When we create the niche product we would want to focus more on performance attributes and less on aesthetics or functionality. Focusing on the one attribute, that is actually in need, will create less production costs than focusing on all three attributes.
After the creation of the product, or service, you need to be able to market your product to the people with the specific targeted needs. Awareness of new products, or services, is usually low in the beginning. You need to make people aware that a product, able to satisfy specific needs, exists. In order to increase awareness, you need to send information to people in need of the specific product, or service, through advertising, networking, internet promotion or personal selling. You need to communicate with your customers, thus bringing the seller and buyer closer so that a transaction can be made. Choose who your customers should be, based on selection instead of luck. Trying to sell to people who have no need for your product will only cause you to lose time and money.
When you start your business you will be able to handle business operations by yourself. Such operations could be simple things such as going to the bank, serving customers, creating a sale or managing the bookkeeping of the business. When the business is recognized by more and more people, your business will be branded in the customers’ minds and organic growth will follow. Managing growth is a crucial thing that requires a lot of attention and dedication. Demand will increase and thus business operations will not be able to be managed by one person. More people will need to be hired to undertake those operations. This is the point when you actually become a manager. A manager is one that needs to manage people to perform operations, which he could not perform by himself. Thus, a manager will make sure that someone is in place to handle bookkeeping or make sure that enough sales persons exist to serve customers and support them.
The most important step is to remember that creating a business is an art and not a science. There are no specific formulas of how to do things. All you need to do is gather knowledge to support and reduce risk in your every move. A business requires innovation in order to differentiate yourself from your competitors and create a competitive advantage. Think out of the box, learn the basics and then use them in any way you thing it is right to do so. Instead of paying attention on how to do things pay attention on how things work. If you know how something works you can spot problems and fix them, learn from your mistakes and never give up.
In conclusion, you need to pay attention to your customers, base your products on their needs, promote them and as you grow try to find more people to enter your business. After all, a business depends mainly on people in order to function properly, thus choose them wisely. And remember to be innovative in your every step to create a competitive advantage over your competitors.
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