An entrepreneur faces dozens of important decisions when starting a business. You must decide which products and services you will sell. The owner needs to decide how to raise funds to operate the business. The entrepreneur has to make intelligent decisions about marketing their product. All of these decisions can have a huge impact on the success of failure of your business. Use these tips to make smart decisions about your startup.
Solving a problem for your customer
Your product or service needs to solve a problem for your customer. The problem must be important enough for your client to look for a solution. Once they find your solution, they must be willing to pay for it.
Say, for example, that you manufacture equipment for bikes. You survey your customers and find out that changing a flat tire during a bike ride is a big problem. Your clients tell you that inflating the spare tire tube is difficult.
Based on your customer feedback, you create a bike tire tube that inflates with the push of a button. There’s no need to use a pump to inflate the tire. You survey your customers and determine that they would be willing to pay $5 for a tire tube that inflated without a pump.
You’ve solved a customer problem and you know the price clients are willing to pay for your solution.
Smart decisions about communication
Improvements in technology allow startup firms to grow the business without adding on huge costs. MPLS solutions demonstrate that you can consolidate your voice, Internet and cloud computing with one service provider. Using just one provider can help you keep your costs down. You can add capacity without a big increase in cost.
Cloud computing allows you to sharply reduce the amount of paperwork you need to keep on file. You can also make changes to a document that is shared by a group of people.
Financing your business
Regardless of how you fund your business, you should create a written business plan. Writing a plan will ensure that you address all of the critical decisions you need to make in your business.
Even if you fund your business with your own dollars, you may eventually need to search for funding to expand. Any investor you approach will want to see a written business plan. Your plan should include at least 3 years of projected financials.
You can find great software that will provide templates for your business plan. The software will also allow you to input assumptions for your financial projections. Just fill out each section in the business plan software, and you’ll have a complete document you can provide to a potential investor.
Administrative tasks
Accounting and payroll processing can consume a lot of your time. As you grow, these tasks become more complex. QuickBooks accounting software is a system that’s easy to use. You can learn how to input your accounting transactions quickly. The software can also provide dozens of reports that are easy to generate. Because the system is user-friendly, you’ll safe time on your accounting tasks.
As you grow your business, consider hiring an outside company to handle your payroll. A payroll firm can take each employee’s wages and calculate the correct withholdings for taxes. The payroll company can also link to your company bank account and pay your employees automatically. By outsourcing your payroll function, you don’t have to keep up with the constant changes in tax law.
Consider using these tips for your startup business. These ideas can help you find a product that your clients will buy. You can use technology to write a comprehensive business plan. Use technology to save time on your accounting and payroll tasks.
