Have you ever thought about taking the plunge to start your own business?
With today's unsettling job market perhaps you will consider striking out on your own - either full or part time.
So where do you start?
First of all let me point out I am not a lawyer or accountant and am not qualified to provide any legal, financial or other professional advice. For that you must consult the appropriate licensed professionals.
Now that's out of the way we can continue.
Certain experts might suggest setting up a business structure, like a corporation as a good first step.
Others might suggest designing logos, business cards, stationary and other company identity stuff.
Still others might recommend getting a separate office with telephones and a fax machine.
Not me. All that may be needed at some point - just not now.
I'm going to take another cut on this - perhaps because my background is in selling. My view is to first test the validity of your business concept or model. You can do this by actually trying to sell something and see how many people actually buy your product or service.
If you think about it this makes perfect sense. Why would you invest anything until you have confidence that your business concept will work? Or until you're actually making money from your business?
I'm not trying to suggest that some infrastructure may not be necessary or desirable. What I am saying is that it shouldn't become a project unto itself - that sucks money out of your pocket - and delays actually getting the business going.
So how do you do this?
Let me share with you what I did to test a new service we planned to offer. I won't go into specifics about the service except to say it revolved around an Internet technology.
First I made sure I had a clear picture of our service. I got down on paper exactly what we proposed to do and who I thought needed this service. It important to mention I did NOT write a big and complicated business plan, just a short and concise two-pager.
Of course my two-pager included all of the features and attributes of our proposed service. But that was only the beginning. We went on to match up any benefits associated with each feature of the product. It's important to think through everything that your product will do to help your customers.
In other words; Why will they buy your product?
But that's not all. Let's take it one step further. What are the benefits of the basic product benefits to our target customer (remember we pictured who would want to buy our product). See the distinction?
Here's an example to show you what I mean:
- Feature: Product builds a website in minutes by selecting from over 1000 unique artist created templates.
- Benefit: Save time and money getting a website created for your business.
- Customer-focused benefit: Start earning money immediately from selling online.
See the transition from product feature to customer-focused benefit?
Okay, next step is to test whether our planned offering is sell-able. You'll want to know if anyone will actually buy what you want to create.
The fastest way I know to tell everyone that you know what you're doing. Ask them for opinions and for referrals - do they know anyone that could use this product. Get advice about features and new ideas for benefits.
Best of all shoot for getting a customer to try it out on. Nothing helps refine a product than a real world test. Done right this will make your product better and also get some valuable customer testimonials.
Don't be shy about turning your friends, relatives and business contacts into a virtual selling team by making them sales affiliates. As an affiliate the get paid a commission whenever they leverage a sale. The more feet on the street selling the better off you are.
That's all for now.
Our plan is to make this an ongoing series of small business and selling tips. Keep watching for our next article in the series.
Mark Dresner is founder of FreeBusinessBookClub.com - the free membership service that delivers free digital downloads to subscribers each month including; free business books and audiobooks, expert interviews, special reports and other business tools and information - all for free.
Mark is also a sales and marketing marketing consultant with 30 years of direct selling experience to both small companies and global enterprises. During his career he has a built and run 3 technology service companies and 2 Internet focused companies.
Free subscriptions and classic ebook starter downloads are available at http://www.FreeBusinessBookClub.com
Contact Mark Dresner at: mark@DigitalEdgeMarketing.com
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