From idea to first sales. Tips for starting a business from successful entrepreneurs. Alexander Semenov
is to ask yourself this question: «What are the costs involves our business model?»
● In the «Key Partners» to ask yourself this question: «Who and what I can charge, in order to facilitate their main activity in business?»
These are the main questions you should ask yourself when filling out the template.
Recommendations for getting started with the business model template
What you will need:
1. Large sheet of paper
2. Stickers
3. Pencils
4. Lots and lots of patience…
Let us start with a little warm-up, you need to ask yourself the questions: «What do I want to achieve by starting a business? What do I want to avoid? What do I want to keep, leave unchanged?» The answers to these questions should be written down. These questions are very important because they describe your goal.
Write the answers to the questions of the blocks on colored stickers and glue them to each part of our template. Let there be many answers. If there are no answers somewhere, but only questions – write down the questions. At this stage, it is important that there is a lot of material.
After the template is completed, based on what is written in the template, try to tell the story of your business as if it already existed, functioned, and worked. As you talk, move from the right side of the template to the left side of the template. Based on the template, describe your business:
– as its owner
– as a client of this company
– as a competitor or bystander
When you tell and follow what is written, you will surely find more hidden resources, broken connections, inconsistencies, questions. This is all material for you to think carefully and add information to your template.
The last step in working with the template is to commit the plan. Record what decisions came to your mind after you have written the entire template and told the story of your business. Record what you need to do, in what time frame, and how you need to do it. When you have a ready-made plan of action, you can consider that you are already a few steps away from success. But it’s too early to relax, you need to start acting.
How to get expert help when creating a business model
Each of you who tried to work with this template has already appreciated how many ideas, thoughts arise along the way, and how difficult it is to «digest» all this material alone. Therefore, it makes sense to go to those people who can help you, who are experts in some kind, who have a lot of life and business experience. But you need to go to these people according to strict rules:
– invite 3 to 6 people to discuss your business idea, if you invite more than 6 people, there is a risk that the discussion may come to a standstill due to a difference of opinion
– define the role of each participant
– describe the basic logic of the template, the questions, and the main areas in this template
– introduce your business idea to the audience based on the template blocks
– enter a ban on criticism. Keep a constructive mindset when working with your business model
– fix all the meanings
– say, «thank you» to everyone who participated in this discussion
External factors and their impact on the business model
Even the best ideas are broken down by reality, even if you have drawn the business model very accurately and clearly, attracted the best experts for advice, the fact is that there are still a few things to consider:
1. Consumer advice. Be attentive to the customers of other companies, because the customer always knows better how to provide him with a service or how best to deliver the goods.
2. External environment. Analyze the environment, look for trends that occur in the economy around us which industries evolve, what industries are in the stage of decline – all this important information, which will allow you time to adjust your actions and make management decisions.
As you move forward with the business model, you have already noticed that this work provides a lot of answers to your questions and helps you make an actual management decision. If you were able to get a complete picture of how your business will function, then you probably already have the answers to these questions:
– Is this my business?
– Can I raise this business or do I need partners? And where should I look for them?
– Do I really want to do business?
– What will my customers get?
– What values do I create in the world, in life, in the market?
But also many other answers. All these answers lead you to the main decision-the willingness to implement your business idea.
WHO ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS?
Classification of business types
There are 3 ways to make money in business:
1. Production:
1) own product
2) product according to the customer’s documents
3) product development for the purpose of selling technology or business
2. Trading:
1) sale of everyday products and distribution of goods of large manufacturers
2) franchise (work under the brand of the product manufacturer)
3) independent purchase of goods from the supplier
4) wholesale trade
5) selling a digital product
3. Provision of services:
1) training
2) consulting
3) preparation and execution of documents
4) representation of the client in relations with third parties
5) body care (treatment, beauty care, fitness, etc.)
6) maintenance of the territory, equipment; household services
7) transportation, logistics services, etc.
All these activities can be divided into 2 classes:
1. You are part of someone else’s big business
2. You are implementing your own entrepreneurial initiative
Task: take a pen, paper, a completed template and see what type of business your business belongs to. This will determine how you will build your future business strategy.
Features of interaction with clients in different types of business
Those of you who decide to do business selling everyday products, your business will be little different from the business of a neighboring outlet. In this case, you do not need to make any large amount of efforts to study your customers, the target audience. Those who offer you goods for sale have long done this for you. Your task in this case is to pay great attention to the location of your outlet, how customers come to your business, how they find you.
There are only three ways to get customers:
1. Point of sale – in the flow of customers, for example, the most crowded street in the city.
2. Attracting Customer Flow to Point of Sale
3. Face-to-face meetings with the client.
When