4 Essential Starter Tips for Small Business

Keen to start a small business? Want to be your own boss? Got that entrepreneurial spirit?

Cristina Beltran

March 27, 2014


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Running your own business is a good career life choice but it requires complete dedication to achieving your business goals. The idea of setting up a new business is appealing to a lot of people but it could be tricky. Some businesses thrive, while others fail. The success and failure of start-ups are affected by so many different factors and starting it right is one of the most significant part. You need to determine where your business is heading at the very beginning. Because the more you know about starting it the right way, the more you get the chance of making it consistent and ultimately successful.

Here, we will discuss four essential starter tips to help you get started:

1. Create a Business Plan

Plan and present your ideas in paper. Creating a business plan is a way of getting the whole picture of how the business works and a tool you will be needing to attract your investors or lenders to back your ventures. It is also an important guideline or reference for managers and employees to make sure they are clear about what direction the company is headed.

Include in the business plan the following basic points:

Product/service and the industry in which it competes
Benefits of your product/service
Target market/customers
Owners and management
Operational strategies
Profit/loss forecast
Cash flow analysis

Your business plan should show how you intend to make profit along with your short-term and long-term goals. It should serve as your guide towards success.

2. Set the Timeline

This is one of the most important factors you should consider. To make all your efforts allotted in a timeline helps you get focused on achieving your business goals. It should be your guide to answer significant questions like: When do you plan to launch? How long does it take to reach your ROI? How long does it take to reach your profit?

You may have set realistic goals, created a clever business model, planned all the steps in detail but without tracking your milestones, you might steer away from your most important goals. Use the timeline as a tool to track your progress and to keep you right on track.

3. Build a Financial Model

A financial model is basically a mathematical representation of the potential of your business. It’s a projection of your costs and revenues set within a specific period of time. It is essentially a tool that will help you analyse how your business will react in different economic situations and to project the outcome of your financial decisions. Same with your business model, your financial model is yet another way of facilitating investors on deciding whether your venture is worth investing in or not.

More so, your financial model should show you a general view of where your initial funding will come from and where it will go – a virtual overview of your cash calculation. It gives you an idea of how you are going to manage your startup’s financial operations that is geared towards growing your capital and gaining profit.

4. Formulate Effective Sales and Marketing Strategies

Find and create sales and marketing strategies that will work towards attracting customers and making sales. One of the many failures of starter companies is that they focus much of their efforts and priorities on building their brand first than on the most essential parts of the business – reaching targeted customer base and converting them into sales.

Let the people know you in the most creative ways possible. Tell them that you have something great to offer, that you have something better, if not, the best of what they already have. You can market through the Internet, TV, print or radio. Or you can create an event with the intent of letting the people know about your business. There are a variety of strategies and techniques to efficiently market your product or service. Formulate strategies that you think will be effective.

Back your marketing efforts with good customer service and work on ways to keep them coming back and increase the amount they buy. Remember that your customers are the most important people in your business. Your business may provide a great product or service, but with the absence of good customer service, all your efforts to make it successful will be useless. The success of your business depends on whether your customers are satisfied or not.

These are just some of the many tips on how to become a successful entrepreneur. This initial checklist, however, should help you make clear decisions and strategic actions on starting up your business. Remember that there is no shortcut to achieving success. But equipping yourself with the right strategies at the initial stage of your business increases your chance to succeed.