To be successful, one must often learn from those people who have already achieved their goals. Businesses are continually required to innovate, or end up falling prey to a younger competitor. Successful entrepreneurs understand the relevance and importance of a lifelong learning. If you are new to the business world, you should always be on the lookout for relevant information about entrepreneurship and the important trends in your particular industry. The world changes pretty fast and to be growing at all times, you need to be learning too! Here are 5 such tips to be a successful entrepreneur.
Leverage Your Network
For budding entrepreneurs, with the business in a very nascent stage, it is often difficult to create a user base or a customer base. This is because you are fresh off the boat and not many people know about you. This is the time to leverage your personal network, seek leads, and ask for recommendations. There is nothing wrong in asking for help from friends and family. That’s how every successful business has grown out of! Your friends can refer your products or services to their friends, colleagues, peers, etc. and you will land your first set of clients or users.
Obviously you would pursue standard marketing techniques like internet marketing, search engine optimization, posters, banners, fliers, etc. depending upon the nature of your business; but all of these marketing techniques have a turnaround time and fairly lower success rate for businesses which are not quite popular. Thus, the people in your vicinity and personal network will be vital for getting that initial revenue. You will be surprised to know that happy clients get you more clients! Most of the successful entrepreneurs have reported that about 50% of the clientele came from the initial clients they had successfully served.
Be Resourceful
Running a startup requires entrepreneurs to be unbelievably resourceful. Many start-ups don’t always have the most lavish set of resources and money needed to scale up the business as they would like to. Almost 90% of the start-ups are bootstrapped, have limited access to money and resources required to perform certain tasks, or hire employees or freelancers, or even consultants; which essentially means that they have to perform most of the tasks on their own within the limited resources available at hand. This means making difficult choices, what all things to invest in, what all to not spend on.
Many successful entrepreneurs have confessed that they never wanted to pay for something as basic as accounting software, and many times they actually didn’t. They would try and perform all of the accounting functions on their own in an attempt to save money that could have been spent on some marketing campaign. The key is to be smart, save your money where it can be saved, and don’t be afraid to spend it where your need to! Keep your resources aligned with your business objectives. Work with whatever you have and make the most of it!
Seek Guidance
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First-time business persons should not be shy in seeking guidance from those who have already tasted both failures and success in their own business. The principle behind this is simple, why should you aim to reinvent the wheel? There is no reason for you to hit the road first and then personally witness the ups and downs when you can learn about it from people who have already witnessed it. Seek guidance from experienced people; learn how they made it possible, how they missed it, and what they did to come out of it. The idea is to be prepared so that you can take appropriate actions without wasting time!
You might have some established persons in your network, share your plans with them and seek guidance. They would be more than happy to help you solve problems that are intrinsic to your business, suggest changes that can help you reduce overheads, and even guide you on things that can help you in scaling up your marketing efforts and sales. There is nothing like learning from someone who has firsthand experience at what you are about to do or have begun doing. Seek advice from successful entrepreneurs, do your research, check case studies and base your decision on the vital knowledge that you gain out it.
Offer Something Unique
Obviously there are tons of businesses going around and many of them might be in the same industry that you are targeting to enter. It is not uncommon for people to get lured by the lucrative opportunities in a particular marketplace and they want to grab a piece of the pie too! However, if you are a fresh entrant in a somewhat established marketplace, then you should be a little different from the existing players in order to be able to succeed. If you end up offering the exact same product or service that it already being offered by other already established players, then the chances for you t succeed are very low. You need to have an edge, an element of uniqueness that draws attention.
Aim to offer something unique under the hood, something that is not being offered by the existing players, something that covers the gaps in the existing system, something that people want but are not quite yet getting from the existing players. This uniqueness will provide you the edge and attention you need to be successful. Study your domain well, study your competition and then devise a competitive strategy.
Price Yourself on the Basis on Results
For young businesses, it is difficult to win the trust of clients because they are uncertain of the consequences. Maybe you will be able to deliver what you are promising, may you will not. They are not quite sure. In such cases, it is best to provide potential clients with a cushion of performance-based pricing model. Give them the confidence that they have nothing to lose if you fail to deliver, and that such a model is a guarantee of superior results. They would only pay when they receive the desired results or derive the desired utility. This method is not taxing on their pockets and leads to higher conversion rates.
