Posts Tagged ‘Business Structures’

 
photo credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

So you have made the first step and decided to start your own business, congratulations! Now you need to know what it takes to run your own business, resources, who to hire, how to market, and all of the other avenues that need to be explored. For now, I will give you some basic steps on starting your own business which should get your plan into motion.

1. Know your customer. NYTimes recently stated that your customer is your number one priority, and this I would have to agree. They are your bread and butter, they are what will make your business bring in profits or not. Focus on a specific group in your area, people who may have the most stress or hardship in their lives at the moment, these people will be more willing to bet on new ideas as they don’t really have anything to loose.
2. Know the market. This is very key, you need to drown yourself in the current market and know everything you can about what is going on right now. The newest trends, the trends that are expected to grow and go far in the future, who is investing in what type of market and more.
3. Do research on your start-up costs. Know what your ball park figures are going to be, what you will need to have down, your monthly loan payments, any equipment purchases, hiring employees, utilities, taxes and stock to name a few.

Once you’re satisfied with the business plan, the next step is to test it. This means answering the question: Do customers really want to buy what you intend to sell? It’s a brutal question, but you need to be realistic. One idea is to talk to potential customers, but avoid your friends; instead, identify a list of likely customers and call them.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

 
photo credit: country_boy_shane

The use of social media is definitely on the rise. Social media has an impact on almost every aspect of business, and sadly many employees have been fired due to the miss use of it. The problem is that social media is so easy, effective, and located everywhere throughout your company. Below are the main challenges that Harvard Business feels every business should be planning for.

• The integration of social media into every aspect of your business including marketing, PR and more. This may mean the need to hire a chief officer to handle the social media division of your business.
• Human Resources will be a huge challenge for most businesses who are switching over to a “social” business. This will mean that all of the human resource policies will need to be reviewed, changed immediately, and then handed back out to every employee.
• There will now be a strong need for governance, such as listening to their customers and employees more often so that they know what is being said about the company and where it is being said. More over, they will need policies and procedures to follow when certain situations arise where the company may be in trouble due to conversation regarding them.

Measurement & ROI. Every organization will continue to struggle with measuring results and reporting ROI. Philosophically, this question can be answered with another question: “what’s the ROI of e-mail”? But it’s a question that won’t go away. New social constructs will be needed to measure social initiatives such as attention (the size or number of participants actively engaged) or authority (the amount of influence a participant has in the ecosystem).

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

 
photo credit: sashafatcat

We often talk about steps to take to ensure better progress and success in business, but I also think it is just as important to discuss the steps to avoid that do have the potential to cripple your business. Read on for crippling steps to avoid in your business that were discussed recently on MyVenturePad.

• Blowing off customer complaints. The idea of ignore it and it will eventually go away is not always the smart thing to do. With customers when ignored long enough will start to take action that could harm your company such as bad word of mouth advertising or even filing complaints with the BBB.
• Using outdated office equipment and technology. By using outdated systems this increases the time it takes to accomplish all of your projects and daily activities and could end up costing you money and causing loss of vital information.
• Not having some sort of system to protect you against fraud. Fraudulent behavior is becoming more and more prevalent today. With all of the systems out there to protect you against this behavior, it is rather dumb to not obtain one of them.

Data denial. It’s not enough to merely track metrics and gather financial information about how your business is performing. You have to look at and interpret the information and heed what it’s telling you.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.