Do you want to start a business?
Airports are some of the best places to connect with people – most of you might wonder why this is the opening sentence of my blog. Well, to start with I decided to write a blog on this subject after my interaction with a woman in the airport (just wanted to inform my readers).
Interacting with her, I found that although she was confident about starting her restaurant, what she dreaded was the lack of mediums to gain information. She complained there was not a way to find relevant people to speak to. She could not find organizations that could help her along or give her some guidance. Post my interaction, I realized that what she needed was a mentor that could help her tackle this pre-entrepreneurial anxiety.
So here I am giving my readers 6 easy tips to start a business. Read and do share in your own ideas.
1. Be true to yourself: Starting a business is an uphill task which involves huge time, money and resources. To get it right in the first instance, you need to get your basic facts right. Let’s say you need to answer these questions first –
How serious you are in starting your business?
What type of competition is present in the market?
Is your business idea strong enough to withstand the competition?
How big a workforce are you planning to have?
Do you have the right temperament to supervise your team?
Remember, answering the above-mentioned list of questions is necessary. If you are unsure about any one of them - STOP RIGHT HERE
2. Contact the industry organizations and networking groups: This is one of the best ways to get information about your nature of industry. These groups are formed to help the new entrants narrow their focus. Members of these organizations are happy to give a helping hand to novices who are passionate about their business. I personally recommend potential business entrepreneurs to join these groups before starting the business. This will help them meet industry-related people who can offer the right guidance.
3. Embrace the social media: Hire a social media analyst! There cannot be anything better for a start-up venture than to spread the network in different social media channels. If you have a marketing, sales and customer-support team, then right social media strategy can work wonders for you. Prompt customer service, quick customer behavior analysis and fast recognition of customer preference can be done through social media.
Tip: do try out CRM Cloud for your business. It will help you leverage interaction and collaboration between your users and transform yourself into a social enterprise. The CRM will serve as a social platform for your employees to share and collaborate with your customers and partners.
4. Integrate your business process with a cloud based CRM for small business: Yes, I have mentioned this again because the CRM software is just the right tool for every SMB. In fact, many business experts have defined CRM as the weapon which allows the SMBs to share the same playing field with the large MNCs. Interesting isn’t it?
With right technology becoming so important now, CRM gives you the edge in getting your business process automated. Imagine after the implementation of the CRM, you can
Generate personalized reports
Put an end to mundane data entry and focus on other key business areas
Send messages to your customers
Easily collaborate and share documents within your enterprise or outside
Organize your daily activities in one app.
5. Calculate the cost: Sit and plan out the expenses. Remember you must have an exact idea of how much the business cost will be. According to many successful entrepreneurs, a common mistake which most of them have made is to avoid doing this homework and end up finding out – lots of unwanted unexpected surprises. Planning the expenses in advance will give you the wake-up call whether you want to continue forward or not.
6. Know when to say no: Trying to achieve all at the start is not going to help you in anyway. Try and narrow your focus on fewer goals at a time. Remember biting off more than what you can chew will take your business to the downhill side. It is best to tell a customer that you would love to serve him but cannot do so presently, due to the prior commitment to other customers. Saying this can work in favor of your business. After all, people always want to work with those who are in demand.