After surviving countless experiences over the years in starting new enterprises, turning around under-performing businesses or re-vamping operations, I have come up with the following post that emphasis on certain aspects to consider right before jumping into the proverbial entrepreneurial waters.

Do you know what a start-up’s success or failure mainly depends on? It is required to being clear about which steps are required to be taken next.. Did we mention it’s easy, too? Yes, down below I would like you to get acquainted with a few fundamental aspects of running a lucrative business.

#1 – Make customers perceive some “benefit” in buying your product

Customers never buy a product because of its features, they buy when they perceive some kind of benefit to those features. Unfortunately, marketing and sales department end up talking about features of the product and let the customers try to figure out the benefits. It seems more like that you are asking your valuable customer’s to do the heavy lifting for you. No, never do that!

Instead, what can be done is communicate well in terms of the benefits of using your product rather than focusing on the features possessed by the product. And try making your benefits concrete, for example- Instead of saying we can radically reduce your inventory costs say we decrease inventory costs by an average of 25%. Be precise!

#2 – Cash flowing ASAP

Cash flow is the lifeline of business, and it’s very important to feed bottom-line profits. So make sure that you start finding ways to jump-start cash flow right from the beginning. But the question is how? Ask for deposits on work up-front, with balances due on delivery. Similarly, in retail businesses, you can ensure delivery by a specific date.

Selling generic items adds value by creating private labels and developing community programs. In which customers pay an up-front monthly fee to ensure delivery or availability of items they will buy on a repeat basis. As a result, cash gap will never be an issue.

#3 – Cost effective

Any cash flow is worthless if it doesn’t turn out to be positive, which means you have to bring more cash than you pay out.

In order to fulfill such requirements, you need to keep both your cost and expenses low. Look for used or gently used items to furnish your office or your retail space, for starters. Then paying vendors up front gives you leverage for negotiating better prices especially where credit is at a premium and where vendors are ready and willing to find creative ways

#4 – Overestimate expenses but not revenues

Overall these years, I have never seen a startup business where expenses were at least 30 percent more than initially planned or anticipated, and revenues are at least that much less.

Well, being conservative in terms of numbers doesn’t mean that you are ready to accept those numbers, it rather means you are arming yourself with the information you can work with and work over.

#5 – Focus on sales and marketing

In the language of business success is quite equivalent to a sale. Nothing happens until and unless a sale is made. Right from the start, find out a good way to get leads, convert leads into sales, and make sure you keep getting repeat sales from your customers. Above all, find a marketing and sales funnel system that you can work, test, measure; one that anyone in your company can utilize.

You will come across several companies getting their brand right before they start to generate leads, which is absolutely wrong! Leads have to be given more importance than the brand, so don’t waste money in getting your brand right. Because without leads you won’t be able to even survive long!

Conclusion

I hope the post provides you some help! Prepare well as much as you can, keep in mind you will have to make changes and corrections. Being armed with the right strategies up front, anyone can succeed in no time.