Getting Your Small Business Off the Ground
When you start a small business it is by no means a simple feat. But the money, time, and effort that you will inevitably have to invest in starting a small business and getting it running, is generally worth it once you start generating sales and making a profit.
After all, you’ll finally be building your own dreams and making your own money instead of building someone else’s on their behalf and them making money off your back!
So, to help you along the way, here are a few simple pieces of advice that should help to get your business off the ground!
Have Confidence In Your Capabilities And Take Action
Many people end up stuck between the stages of concept development and actually getting started in bringing this product or service to life. While it may feel daunting actually diving in to creating your business and making a name for yourself in your chosen field, you’re not going to make any profit without pursuing these next steps.
Unfortunately timing will never be right are perfect for starting your own business. Your business going to have ups and downs regardless of when you started and even the best laid out plans can fall apart.
Obviously you want to have some sort of plan in place and direction you want to go, but don’t wait around for perfection before you get started. You are going to need to make corrections and adjustments as you go along and learn throughout your journey of building a business.
This being the case, there’s no reason to wait around for all the lights to be green before you start your journey. Consistent action over time will compound and your business will start to head in the right direction.
As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be great to start, but you do have to start to become great.
So, be brave and dive on in as soon as the time is right!
Putting People To Work To Scale Your Small Business
There are three key foundations to building wealth, money at work, people at work, and systems at work. Usually the main reason you started a business is to have more money and eventually put money to work for you.
So before you get to that point you’re going to want to utilize having people at work and systems at work. There are a variety of ways to put people to work in your business even if you are just getting started.
You could do things like outsourcing, hiring freelancers, even starting a business in network marketing could be another low investment option to grow your business.
With businesses like network marketing, you can build a team and organization, and this wouldn’t cost you any additional investment. If you have more of a traditional business, outsourcing could be another great option.
Outsource When You Can To Grow Your Small Business Faster
Generally speaking, small business owners are relatively reluctant to take on staff early in their business’ development. This isn’t all too surprising.
Your company is still going to be finding its feet and you want to be sure that there is a market for your products and services before committing to providing others with part or full time wages.
You don’t want to have to fork out wages when you’re not yet generating sufficient profit! However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to tackle every task your business requires alone.
Outsourcing is always an option! By outsourcing, you can take on the temporary help of an outside individual or agency to complete work without committing to contracted hours and benefits such as annual leave, parental leave, and sick leave.
There are various areas of your work that you can outsource. From IT work through Netcom Solutions to market research, manufacturing, and outsourcing really can get the ball rolling and lift a weight from your shoulders at the same time.
While you’re thinking about outsourcing aspects of your business consider what income-producing tasks you and only you can do. These are the things that you should focus your time on, and then you can allow others to take on project that are of less priority.
This can help increase your profits as you are now focused on the highest priority tasks to grow your business.
Putting Systems In Place To Build A Small Business
Putting systems in place to scale and grow your business in another great option especially if you’re just getting started. There are a variety of systems you can set up to scale your business that very low-cost and that can bring in massive results in the long run.
With the right systems in place you can even automate many of the activities you are spending a lot of time on to grow your business. This can free up more of your time and allow you to focus on the higher level income activities, which can increase your profits even faster.
There are few systems you want to implement such as a lead generation system, email list building system, sales funnel system, and a system of follow-up. With these systems in place you can scale your business the massive way without having hundreds of employees.
Setting Up A Lead Generation System
Setting up a lead generation system should be the first step in this process. You can generate thousands of high-quality leads for your business through content marketing.
There are many strategies that work such as, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or blogging, just to name a few. The good news is, once you master the concepts and strategies, they all really work when you work them.
The idea is to lead with value-based content that serves your target audience and then follow up with something that offers them something for free in exchange for their name email and phone number. Doing this will allow you to start bringing in quality leads that are interested in what your company has to offer.
Certainly this process takes more than a few sentences to explain in depth. So if you’d like to learn more about setting up a lead generation system for your business click here.
Set Up An Email Marketing System To Grow Your Small Business
You also want to integrate your lead generation system with an email marketing system. This is where the leads you start generating go to after they opt-in.
Understand that not everyone that sees your offer for the first time is going to buy. Certainly a percentage of the people will, but a majority will need some time and repeat exposures of your business before they get started.
This is why email marketing is so powerful and why it is one system you need to set up to scale your business. With an email marketing campaign in place, you can continue to provide value to your audience, develop relationships, and start bringing in new sales on an ongoing basis.
Another great aspect to this process is that you can automate it to some extent. You can set up an email series or drip campaign that can do this for you. You obviously still need to create the content and value-based information up front, but you can create that once and let it go to work from there.
If you don’t yet have an email marketing system in place I’d recommend setting up Aweber. It’s what I’ve used for years and it is a low-cost option start an email marketing branch of your business. Click here to get your first 30 days of Aweber for free.
Integrate Your Lead Generation System And Email Marketing System With A Sales Funnel System
Now that you have a lead generation system an email marketing system in place you want to integrate that with an effective sales funnel system. This allows you to scale and automate your business further by leading your new leads through additional offers to bring in revenue for your business.
The foundation is to lead with value and offer something your target market needs or wants for free, in exchange for them becoming a lead. From there you can offer various products for sale that can help them achieve even greater results be on your free offer.
The idea is to make these offers congruent with the free lead magnet, and to increase the value and take their results further.
An example would be if you gave away a 10-step checklist things you need before you start a home business. After that you may sell a higher level course on how to start a business after someone signs up for that.
Having congruent offers is one foundation you need to sell more for your business. If you aren’t very techy, and want to learn more about setting up a sales funnel system in your business click here.
Setting Up A Follow Up System For Your Small Business
As you start to get more and more leads and email subscribers, you’ll want to set up a system for follow up. The fortune is in the follow-up, and without proper follow-up you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.
One system that can help you get better follow-up results for your business is using a CRM or customer relationship manager. This can help you streamline your follow-up process and that allows you to get better results talking to less people.
One area I find many new business owners struggle with is in follow up. They have the mindset that they need to convince everyone to become a customer, vs focusing on those that are actually interested in what they have.
Spending too much time with the wrong people can take you off track and delay profits for your business. Ideally the majority of your time should be spent on those that are interested, open, and that can afford what are business sells.
Using a CRM can help you weed out the people that don’t fit those qualifications. If you’d like to learn more about setting up a CRM for your business you can check out the CRM I use and recommend here.
Expand your offers
Don’t fall prey to complacency. If your products are selling well, continue to sell them. But improve upon them. Come up with new ideas. Launch new lines. Offer alternatives in different price brackets.
It’s always important to constantly expand on your business as long as you are experiencing success. This will help to keep the market engaged and will drive further and continuous sales! If you stick with the same products and routine for too long, people will lose interest and it’s extremely hard to rebuild this once it’s gone.
As you can see, you’re going to have a whole lot of work on your hands in the process of becoming a successful small business owner. But you just have to stick at it!
Success doesn’t come easy, but it’s more than worth following the steps above to get a taste of it!
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P.S. If you aren’t generating leads for your business it’s because you don’t have a system in place to do it. CLICK HERE to set up the exact system I use to Rake In Quality Targeted Leads Daily
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