Starting a Business in 7 simple steps. Alex Ritchie

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СКАЧАТЬ first before deciding if they’re interested enough to keep reading.

      In this section you should introduce yourself and describe your experience and any relevant skills or qualifications. Give a brief description of the business, its purpose and a summary headline overview of how this will be achieved. Highlight the following aspects of the business:

       its strengths, for example, its USP, any intellectual property or registered trademarks held, upfront orders, management team experience

       expected profitability and turnover

       the market and the potential for sales

       any funding requirements and potential prospects for investors

      The length of your summary will depend on the length and complexity of your business plan. As a general rule of thumb, an acceptable length is somewhere between one and four pages. Before writing yours, it’s worth reading a few others to compare length, style and detail. Larger businesses often include their business plan on the company website, so look around at how others have written their executive summaries. If you’re writing your business plan to leverage investment, ask your potential investors if they have a particular style or format you should adhere to.

       Business description

      The business description section usually follows on from the executive summary. It should outline the vital elements of the business, including:

       a history of the business or the history of the idea.

       the ownership of the business.

       any awards won or membership in reputable industry bodies.

       the location of the business.

       the structure of the business (e.g. sole trader, Ltd, LLP).

       the company size.

       the purpose of the business or mission statement if one has been developed.

       your vision.

      Be careful not to use industry or business jargon when describing these things as the reader may not understand it. Keep descriptions simple, using layman’s language.

       Description of the products or services

      Next, you need to describe your product or service. What does it offer the customer and why should they buy it? Does it have any unusual or innovative features? How will you make the product or run the service? How will orders be fulfilled? Make a brief comparison to any similar products or services on the market and describe what makes yours unique. If you have any intangible assets, such as trademarks, copyright or patents pending or owned, ensure you describe them here.

       Market analysis

       Your target market

      Next, you need to think about the demographics of your customers. Think about their age range(s), location, gender, social groups, lifestyle preferences, purchasing habits, income level, education, hobbies, and indeed anything you can find that will help to define their characteristics as closely as possible. You must analyse each sub-group of your target market and develop a different marketing plan to reach each of them. (See Step 3.)

      Include the size of your target market and what the purchase potential might be (gathered from your market research and analysis – see here). Have you identified any key purchasing motivations that a particular group has? Do they need your product or service or is there a problem that it will alleviate? If so, include it. Where statistics or graphs are available, include them and reference where they came from. Trade associations and industry bodies can be useful here; they represent particular industries and trades, and it’s likely that there’ll be one for your industry or trade too.

      Lastly, you need to provide information on how you expect to reach the market – your marketing strategy. Information later on in this step and in Step 3 will help you to define this.

       Market research

      It’s important that you carry out market research on your business idea, products or services so that you get a good idea of how well they’ll be received by your potential customers.

      There are two basic kinds of market research, quantitative and qualitative, and there are a number of different methods within each of the two categories. Both types can provide useful information and you might decide on a mixture of both, depending on your budget or time frame. Generally, qualitative research provides more detailed results from fewer people and can take more time, money or resources per person to conduct, whereas quantitative research usually provides less detailed information from much larger numbers of people within a shorter time frame and often at a cheaper rate. You should aim to use a mixture of both types to ensure you achieve reliable results from your research.

       Qualitative

       Focus groupsGather a group of potential customers together to garner their opinions on any aspect of your business. Questions should be structured according to what information you wish to learn. For example, if you need to understand what will make your customers buy your product, ask them what they currently buy that’s similar and why they buy it. Include questions about convenience, price, brand allegiance, customer service, etc. Then ask them what they like and don’t like about your particular product.

       In-depth interviewsOne-to-one interviews can provide more detailed results but will require a longer time frame or a larger team of interviewers.

       Field trialsThese involve placing your product with a group of customers or stores and allowing them to test it for a specified period of time. This can be very effective but ensure you obtain agreement beforehand that customers or stores will be willing to feed back results in a structured way. This could involve contacting a group of potential or existing customers and asking them if they’d like to trial your product for free for a period of time in return for completing a short survey on their findings.

       Quantitative

       SurveysSurveys can reach a larger number of people. Distribution might be in hard copy or online or conducted via telephone or in person. You should be prepared for fairly low response rates (5% would be considered a good response rate if you’re not offering an incentive for completing the survey) and less detailed responses.

       Data collection and analysis

      Data collection and analysis is also known as a situational analysis and is a vital СКАЧАТЬ