From idea to first sales. Tips for starting a business from successful entrepreneurs. Alexander Semenov

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      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 we talk about the target audience, we very often mistakenly define «who is our client.» You need to know four clear characters who are in contact with our product:

      1. User (the one for whom the product is made)

      2. The one who pays the money. Very often, someone who pays money is not a user, for example, mom buys a toy to her son

      3. The person making the purchase decision. It may well be that my mother has money, but the decision to buy a toy is made by dad.

      4. The one who gives advice to the person making the purchase decision. For example, a person with whom dad consulted.

      Basic Principles of Customer Development

      Before we go any further, we need you to pay attention to one very important thing: that today we live in a world of oversupply, overproduction, in a world where you can buy everything, there would be money, so now you need to be puzzled not by how to develop your product and «push» it to the market, but by the fact that we discuss every step, every stage of the development of your product-invention with our potential customers and at this stage of discussion we make them our supporters, future buyers.

      To solve this problem, several techniques have been devised that allow you to bypass it. One of these methods is called Customer Development. If everyone used to talk about creating a product, now everyone is starting to talk about creating customers. As entrepreneurs, you should not try to find a niche that you will fit into, but create your own niche. When developing a product, you need to interact with your future customers, studying their demand at every step, at every movement around the development of your product. You need to create this audience that will buy from you. Remember that a product is a fairly broad concept. It can be anything you produce, whether it’s buns or a service.

      In Customer Development, there are 3 principles to follow:

      1. A hypothesis is just a hypothesis. When you go to people and start talking to them, things may not be the way you imagined them to be.

      2. Verification-confirmation of hypotheses, confirmation of your facts. You should go to people, talk to them, offer them your product, test this product on them, look at feedback, go back to your office, think about everything you saw, heard, what comments you received, refine your product and go back to people (this is the third principle – cyclicity).

      3. The cyclical nature of constant product development. We made a product, tested it on potential customers, realized what needed to be changed, changed it, and went back to testing. And so on until you get a convincing answer from your potential customers that they are satisfied with everything, they like it, they share your thoughts.

      Task: think about who you might ask, whose opinion you might be interested in, when you talk about your product, idea, or solution to a problem. Take a pen, paper, and make a list of 20 people you can talk to about your business idea.

      The product life cycle. The user path

      Very often, when an entrepreneur begins to study customers, the market, build a business, thinks narrowly about his business, in a very narrow area, does customer research, conducts analytics, etc. This is a mistake that does not allow you to see a huge number of opportunities that lie in the time interval when the client before he came to your office, and after he left you. There is a huge amount of advice on how to improve your business, distinguish it from competitors, and make it interesting for the client. How do you find these tips? If we recall the product-oriented approach, there is such a thing as the «Product Lifecycle»:

      1. development

      2. production

      3. delivery to the point of sale

      4. sale

      5. transportation

      6. Installation

      7. training in the use of

      8. maintenance and repair

      9. dismantling

      10. removal and disposal of the product

      1. Production:

      1) own product

      2) product according to the customer’s documents

      * The steps depend on the specific product

      And if you follow this whole wide chain, you will see that in fact you could be useful to the customer both before installing your product, and after he decided to get rid of your product. Moreover, you can find places where you can earn extra money. For example, you can organize training for the customer to use your product. You can do it for free, trying to encourage sales, but you can do it for money. Imagine that you understand that there can СКАЧАТЬ