Making any small business successful depends on many factors. Some people think that only selling of product is enough to get success. But the truth is you need to work in multiple areas to make it running, growing, and make it successful.
It is very important that you have proper planning and strategy for your business. You should know the answer to the following:
- What is the product that you want to sell?
- Who are your target customers? Who is going to purchase your products?
- What is your total capital or budget?
- What is the geography and demography of your target customers?
- What resources do you need to start and or run your business?
- Who are your competitors?
- What are the ways to promote your business?
- What is the risk level in your business?
I have listed only a few important questions here but you should try to understand maximum and have proper planning and a good marketing strategy. Do some basic market research to understand your competition and market. So that you can establish your products very well.
It is not necessary that you always learn from your own mistakes. You can learn from other mistakes also and you may learn it when you will observe others, research, study and build your network.
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In this article, I am writing about a few important tips that may help you to establish and make your small business successful.
1- Hire a Good Team, Training & Development
The growth and success of your business depend a lot on your team. If your team is highly skilled, passionate, and performing, there is a high chance that you get the success.
If you want to build a strong foundation for your business, then just hire a good team only. If you don’t have a good team, you may face a lot of problems in implementing your business plans on time.
Apart from having a good team, regular training and their development are also important. You need to align and motivate them with your organization’s goals.
Here are some of the benefits of having a good and skilled team:
- Have a sense of responsibility.
- Improved productivity.
- Cost-effective business.
- Easy to implement teamwork.
- Discipline in business
- Lead generation and sales
- Positive and Happy Environment
Apart from having a good team, you need to implement a lot of things to make your small business successful. But you have to understand that having a strong and skilled team is one of the most important pillars of your organization.
From the start of your business, you should focus on hiring good employees.
2- Quality of Products
The quality of your product is another important core pillar of your business. Companies like Apple, and Mercedes, are successful because of one of the most important reasons and that is the quality of their products.
It is important that you sell high-quality products that meet your customer’s expectations and demands. See, business is not a one-time selling process. Your business is successful when your customer starts buying products from you repetitively.
And a good number of repeat sales is possible when you are selling quality products and have good after-sales services. If your customers are not happy and satisfied with your products, then why they will come again to purchase from you?
Just think like a customer. Will you buy a product from a company that sells bogus products? I guess you would not buy it.
Customer satisfaction is very necessary whatever product you are selling in the market. If you want to make your business successful, you need to maintain the quality of your products continuously.
Here are some of the following benefits of having quality products:
- Improve sales and productivity.
- Customer satisfaction.
- Repeat sales
- Good brand value.
- Profitability and growth.
- Helpful in making marketing and sales strategy.
- Word of Mouth Publicity
There is a very rare chance that you can make your business successful without having quality products. So, it should be your primary agenda to maintain the quality of your products and to continuous improvement in them.
3- Customer Service and Support
Good customer service make your customer happy and satisfied. They start trusting your company and have a positive image of your brand. When you have good customer service and support, directly and indirectly, you have a lot of benefits for your organization. Let’s have a look at some benefits:
- Retain customers.
- Customers start trusting you.
- Improve your brand image and value.
- You have the opportunity for cross-sales.
- You get referral sales
- Customer Acquisition cost
- Improved total sales (New+Repeat Sales)
- Make loyal customer
Quality products+Awesome customer service is a deadly combination. If you have good quality products and awesome customer service, you are outstanding. Now it is just a matter of good management and success is yours.
You can’t get good repeat business if your customer service and support are poor. To make your business successful, you should always consider customer service as one of your top priorities.
4- Online Presence of Your Business
Whatever, good business you are doing, nowadays online presence is crucial for your business. You can increase your business multiple folds by using online space.
You should focus on both types of presence – online and offline. From the start of your business, you should make your brand presence on the internet.
You should use social media platforms and should also have a website or blog related to your business. It will help you to create awareness about your brand and sales as well.
If you use social media platforms smartly and actively, you can generate a lot of leads and sales for your business. And nowadays, the presence of your business on the internet is important from customer points of view also.
People want to know about your business on the internet. The online presence of your business helps you to build your brand image and make your business successful.
5- Sales and Marketing Strategy
A strong sales and marketing strategy is a combination of multiple things. In simple language, you should have a proper plan for the following:
- What are your target and objectives?
- How many sales do you want to do in a week, month, quarter, and year?
- How are you going to reach your customers?
- How would you promote your products?
These are only a few main questions only. You need to have a proper workout plan for your sales and marketing.
Having a good sales and marketing strategy is very crucial to making your business successful. If your sales and marketing are poor, you may fail to establish a successful business.
Here is a list of a few marketing strategies that you may apply to your business.
- Word of Mouth Marketing Strategy: Your customer will talk about your products and services to their near and dear friends, relatives, etc.
- Social Media Marketing Strategy – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Telegram, etc
- Outbound Marketing – Telecalling, Cold Calling
- Content Marketing Strategy – Website, Blogs
- Paid Advertisement – Google Ads, Social Media Advertisement
It is also important that you track your inputs and results. If you have a proper track record of your actions and results, you would be able to do an analytical study.
After that, you would be in the position to know what is your progress. And you would know what is working for your business and what is not. So that you can take improvement and cost-effective actions for your business.
6- Customer Feedback and Improvements
Maybe you have a very good idea and have launched quality products. But the important aspect is whether people are liking it or not. People are satisfied with your products and service or not?
You need to know these answers. That’s why the first and most important thing is to do some testing before the final launch of the products.
And the second most important is to take regular feedback and suggestions from your customer after selling your products.
Customers’ feedback will display to you some realities of your products and will give you some opportunities to improve your products and services.
Whenever you have negative feedback or criticism of your customer, take it positively and try to understand their points of view. If you listen to your customer and resolve their issues, there are chances they become your very loyal customers.
7- Finance Management
Finance management is one of the most important aspects of your business. You should know how you can run your business effectively with particular capital. You should be well equipped to manage your finance very well.
In simple layman’s language, finance management is all about minimizing your business cost and maximizing your business profit without compromising quality and ethics.
There can be so many different kinds of expenditure in your business, you need to make all the decisions very carefully. You should consider all the important and necessary expenditures and should take a proper thoughtful decision.
And you should also check the leakage of your money. If there are unnecessary and unwanted expenses going on, you should think about them.
You should be very well aware of your business’s assets and liabilities columns. You need to have good financial management to make your business successful.
8- Innovation and Upgradation, Competition
I can give you many examples of such businesses that didn’t upgrade themselves according to time. And finally, after some time, they disappeared from the market.
Innovation and up-gradation of your products are very important aspects of your business. You should always keep it on your top priority list and work on it.
If you are into business, you must have eyes on your competitors. You should know what are their products and how, and why they are offering them to the customers.
If you study your competition, you will learn a lot. It will also help you to be cost-effective and market your products effectively.
9- Business Planning and Goal Setup
You have decided to go somewhere but if you don’t know where you want to go, you will reach nowhere. Whenever you start, you should know your destination.
The same applies to your business also. You should know your goals. If you don’t know your goals, you can’t make proper planning to achieve them.
If you know that you want to achieve a turnover of 1 core in the first year of your business, you will plan yourself according to it. And if you want to achieve a 10 crores turnover, then you will plan for 10 crores.
But if you don’t know how much you want to achieve, how would plan your business? You cant define the steps and actions that you need to take.
So first of all, you need to work out what you want to achieve in short term and in the long term as well. Goal setup and planning are very basic and important steps to make your business successful.
10- Market Research
The success of most businesses depends on the opportunities available in the market and how you implement them. You may have two options. First, find out business opportunities for you. Second, you create a business opportunity by innovating something.
Market research should be an integral part of your business. It will help you in many areas. Here are some benefits of market research in business:
- Identification of target customers.
- Hep to implement effective sales and marketing strategies.
- Know about your product’s visibility and customer feedback.
- Opportunity to launch new products.
- Know about your competition.
- Cross sales opportunity.
- Know the demand and supply.
- Let you know how you can be better in the market.
Implementing regular market research for your business, should not be only once in while kind of activity. It is a kind of regular practice, that you should do to your business successful.
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