Small Business Start-Up, Tips and Warnings – Part 3

After you have gone through with the setting up of your business you are now ready to launch your business. First, you will have to build your product or develop your service. Once you have the business all planned, financed, and have your basic level of staffing, get going. Whether that’s sitting down with the engineers and getting the software coded and tested, or getting materials sourced and shipped to your fabrication room (aka “garage”), or purchasing in bulk and marking up the price, the building process is the time during which you prepare for market. During this time, you may discover things such as:

The need to squeeze the ideas. Perhaps the product needs to be a different color, texture or size. Maybe your services need to be broader, narrower or more detailed. This is the time to attend to anything that crop up during your testing and development phases. You’ll know innately when something needs modification to make it better or to make it less like a competitor’s stale offerings.

Getting feedback. Friends and family make great resources for asking questions and getting feedback––don’t hesitate to use them as your sounding board. The need to increase the size of your premises. This happens more often than expected. Once the stock starts piling up, you may find it ends up in your living room, bedroom or in your garden area. Think rental of storage premises if needed.

Friend, you will need to discover your inner publicist. You might truly believe in your product or service but it won’t fly unless everyone else believes in it too. If you’re new to advertising and marketing or you dislike doing the sales pitch, now is the time to overcome such feelings and put on the publicist persona. You need to develop an excellent short pitch to convince people that need your product or service, one that reflects the value, purpose and potential of what your business is offering. Write down this pitch in many ways until you find one that you feel satisfied and that says it all and is something you can say readily. Then practice it until it becomes a part of you.

Have interesting, eye-catching business cards printed.

Spend time developing an excellent social media presence. This can be done well before the business is ready, increasing anticipation. Use social media or clubs you participate in to build excitement and spread the word. You want to build a thrill so that people will begin following your progress. (Be sure to choose business accounts for your business and keep your personal accounts separate. The messages you send should be tailored differently, depending on which account you’re sending from.)

Friend, implement your marketing and distribution plans. With your product being built or services developed, and a reasonable expectation on when either is ready for selling, begin marketing. If you will be advertising in periodicals, they will need copy or images at least two months in advance of publication. If you will be selling in stores, get pre-orders sold, and shelf space allocated. If you will be selling online, get that e-commerce site ready to sell.

If you’re offering a service, advertise in appropriate trade and professional journals, magazines, newspapers for our setting. Set up a website for direct orders of your products. While you don’t need to know how to make a website yourself, it is strongly recommended that you learn the basics so that you know what to expect when asking someone else to make one for your business, and so that you can make tweaks and fix problems at 1, 2 or 3am in the morning, should they arise. Basic short courses in website development are available online, many for free.

Start contacting people in the industry, and get the word out to your future customers about that thing they always wanted is about to be available to them.

Finally, launch your product or your service. When the product is all built, packaged, coded, and ready to sell, or when your services are fully worked out and ready to go, hold a special event to launch your business. Send out a press release, announce it to the world. If possible, Tweet it, Facebook it, let the word resound to all corners of your market—you have a new business!

Hold a party and invite people who can spread the word for you. It doesn’t need to be pricey––purchase the food and drink from bulk discount stores and get family and friends to help with catering (you can give them a product or service in return).

To close I offer you with the below tips and warnings:

With the advent of the internet, online businesses are probably the easiest way to start and very much less expensive in terms of start-up cost than an offline counterpart.

Always provide value and service to those who may be your customers, even if they are not currently. When they do need your product, you want them to think of you first.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with prices. Keep learning, and be adaptable to change. Find buddies, mentors, local business-related organizations, Internet forums to discuss the daily details of running a small business. It’s much easier for everyone to perform their core businesses well and prosper when they don’t waste time and energy “reinventing the wheel” on housekeeping.

Most direct selling companies have low start-up capital compared to a traditional brick and mortar business. You can also break even rather quickly compared to the traditional business.

A franchise is a great idea although the start-up capital is way too high for most people. You can also consider trading on eBay or Overstock.

Beware of people who ask for money before giving you business. Trade leads to prosperity through mutual gain. So a business should be willing to pay you to work for it. (A franchise store or home-sales business may have legitimate start up costs, but they should reflect a reasonable cost of getting you started in the business so the managers would make money through your success, rather than just by getting you in.)

Beware of business propositions that seem to offer “something for nothing.” They probably involve taking something from somebody—usually you. There are innumerable variations, some more polished than others. Examples include pyramid schemes and advance-fee fraud.

(Chealy Brown Dennis is a marketing and business development consultant. He is also a much sought after motivational speaker and offers training in leadership and organizational development, creative sales and marketing, strategic planning, wealth creation, team building and management and offers on-location and train-the-trainer formats. He can be contacted through email at: dennisbc2011@yahoo.com or on phone at: 0886-264-611 or 0776-545-394)