One fine day you woke up and decided this is it! It's time to dump her and move on. Here are some steps you can take to begin the process of preparation for mediation.
- Choosing a business idea - Define for yourself clearly what is the service or product will form the basis for the new business activity - is it an innovative service or product or are you entering a competitive world? What is the industry in which your business will operate? Who are your competitors? Taught the industry and competitors.
- Added value and relative advantage - Ask yourself if your business will bring with it a novelty that has not existed before, what is the added value you offer to the target audience, is there a situation where your business will have a relative advantage over competitors, and perhaps, your goal is to increase the existing competitiveness in the industry in which you will operate?
- Defining the target audience - the success of any business depends on the feasibility of revenue. Even the most perfect and individual design will not be able to bring the desired success without actual revenue. Therefore, you need to define the target audience that will yield the expected revenue. Let your thoughts wander in all possible directions and try to target as wide an audience as possible.
- Market surveys and business feasibility - Try to learn as much as possible about the industry you have defined at the stage of choosing the business idea and gather information about the competitors as much as possible. You may find that competitors do not adequately meet the demands of the audience and you can be a kind of complementary product or service. If possible, it is advisable to conduct market surveys which may give a broad picture of the feasibility of the business you are setting up, whether there is demand or whether the market is saturated enough.
- Business Plan: Revenue Objectives - Writing a business plan is the first practical milestone after you have completed the theory stages. You should devote deep thought while going down to the last detail and segmenting the activity into as many sections as possible. The business plan will be your "business bible" for you. It serves as a basis for starting the activity and for examining it as the business develops. In this framework, set yourself an income target (daily / weekly / monthly) while segmenting according to various parameters: product type, pricing Different for each product by cost or by the target audience, etc. It is recommended to prepare at least 2 plans, one will be more optimistic and will set high and challenging goals, and the other will be more realistic and will set lower goals than the first.
- Business plan: Expenditure budget - Similar to the income goals, set yourself as detailed an expenditure budget as possible. Think of all the possible expenses that may come your way, even those that are most likely to happen. Do not forget to add various expenses that you did not think of. If you adjust the period of income targets to the expenditure budget - you will discover the expected profitability in each period.
- Marketing - Once you have defined the target audience that the business is aimed at, write down all the existing marketing means and choose from them the ones that you think are most suitable, for example, direct mail, advertising in the media, and press, flyers and more. If you forgot to set the marketing budget, it's time to go back to the business plan and allocate a substantial budget for the marketing activity - as it is the one that will ultimately yield the expected revenue.
- Cash Flow - The success or failure of any business depends entirely on the cash flow. Since the financial conduct of the business is within a bank account, proper cash flow planning will allow you to understand whether a cash shortage is expected and over what period. From this, you can deduce what is the initial capital that you will be required to invest in order for the business to start operating, and alternatively - what is the bank credit that you will apply for in order to cover this deficit. Conducting according to the planned flow will greatly assist in managing the bank account without deviating from the framework set for you. If you anticipate that a deviation may occur in the bank account, you can know this in advance and contact the bank in advance in order to inform him and ask for his help in bridging the expected gap.
- Execution performance against the budget - at a good time you set off and the business began its activity. But do expectations really come true? To answer this question, you need to keep track of and compare actual income to actual income targets for the period you have defined, and in the same way, examine whether you have met the spending budget you set for yourself and whether you have used less or exceeded it.
- Drawing conclusions for the future - As a result of the analysis you performed, here is the place to draw conclusions for the future. If you have identified that the revenue target is "small" on you, you can increase it and thus challenge yourself to keep moving forward. If you find that you have exceeded the spending budget, this is what the items are, and try to understand why - whether the planning was wrong, or whether you did not give enough thought when actually spending.
This is the time to fix and change things, after all, every plan is a basis for change. Remember: selling the service or product is not the goal but the means on the way to achieving the goal. Your goal in starting a business is to maximize profits. Early and meticulous planning is the key to success.