Make sure you have a clear vision and plan, and that you stick to them.
In most cases, start-up success or failure is all about knowing both the how and the why of taking action, and always being clear about which steps to take next.
- 1. Offer what a person wants to buy, not just what you want to sell. Sometimes people jump into a business built around a certain product or service they think will be successful, rather than one that is already proven to have a market. It is better to have a small portion of a large category than a large portion of no market at all.
- Always find new means to keep costs low. The cash flow is worthless if it is not positive cash flow, which means you must bring in more cash than you pay out. To accomplish this, you need to keep your costs and expenses low.
- When planning, always overestimate expenses and underestimate revenues.
- Focus more on sales and marketing. In business, nothing happens until a sale is made. From the start, you will need to find a good way to get leads, convert leads into sales, and make sure you keep getting repeat sales from your customers. In order to do this you must find or create a marketing and sales funnel system that you can work, test, measure; one that anyone in your company can use. Too many entrepreneurs focus on getting their brand right before they start to generate leads. That is exactly the wrong way to go about business. Leads are always more important than your brand, so don’t waste money getting your brand right at the expense of spending that same money to buy new customers.
- Test and measure everything. You can’t change what you don’t measure, and you can’t tell if a program or strategy is working if you are not faithfully testing, measuring and tracking your results.
