The hardest (and most expensive) sale you will ever make is the first one.
Is your business positioned for growth?
With social media, news travels very fast. When a customer has bad experiences, the news can become viral and destroy a business.
The courage to raise your prices/rates
Business owners are often afraid to increase their prices or billing rates. They're afraid they'll lose all their customers if they increase their prices or billing rates. They also feel sorry for their customers during economic hard times.
Break through business barriers using other people’s resources
If you can you identify another noncompeting business that has the resources you need, maybe you can structure an arrangement giving you access to their resources for mutual benefit.
Does your business “pencil out”?
When someone starts a business or introduces a new product, they are very excited.
It’s good to be enthusiastic, but you don’t want your emotions to blind you to the reality of whether your business will work or not.
Before charging ahead and investing a lot of money in marketing and infrastructure, put together some estimated numbers about how your business will work.
What will be your business model? How will the business generate ongoing revenue? Most businesses can’t survive as a “one product wonder.”
How many sales can you hope for? What will be the cost of fulfillment? What is the estimated cost to promote the product or service? What infrastructure (rent, employees, independent contractors, equipment) will be required?
An accountant can help you put these figures together into a financial projection or business plan. The projection is only as good as the assumptions and information provided to the accountant. You might need additional information from engineers, marketers and other individuals with experience with a similar business to assure the assumptions are realistic.
Marketing teacher Dan Kennedy shared an experience about a client who had a great skin care product. It was costly to produce because the ingredients were rare, exotic and expensive. The product would have to be sold for $149 per month to be profitable. Dan’s experience was this type of product wouldn’t sell for more than $49.95 per month. (That’s an amount that goes “under the radar” on a monthly credit card statement.) He spent a day explaining to his client that the economics didn’t work for this product, and no marketing strategies could overcome bad economics.
Avoid sending your money down a “rat hole”. Pencil out what the likely outcome will be from offering your products or services. If the business can produce a profit and you’re still excited, then go ahead.
The value of deadlines
Napoleon Hill said, "A goal is a dream with a deadline." Without the deadline, the dream will probably just remain a dream.
A dentist’s office with a locked front door
Paddi Lund decided to make new rules of engagement for his dental practice.
It ain’t necessarily so
When you see a claim that what’s “tried and true” doesn’t work anymore, it ain’t necessarily so.
Essential Business Skills
Starting and running a business is hard work and requires certain business skills to establish the business and assure it will survive and grow.
Are your customers or your employees more valuable for your business?
It's great to appreciate and support your employees. It's also important to remember that customers pay the business's bills in exchange making their lives better. I believe the business exists to provide valuable products and/or services to its customers (usually solving a problem), and, in the process, to provide quality of life for its owners/investors and employees.