The overlooked five essential things you need for your new business
You have a business plan you, have a marketing idea and the chances are you’ve been doing this for some time. You’ve had late nights, early mornings and a lot of coffee. And you know your business plan is absolutely perfect.
But there are a few things that you have probably missed out. And it won’t be the strategy, and it won’t be marketing, and it won’t even be your financial forecast. Because of course you’ve checked out business credit vendors, and have everything under control… or do you?
Smarts
You know that you are intelligent and that intelligent people are essentially the driving force behind the success of any company.
However, many companies ‘dumb down’ their staff and don’t check in on energy levels – which contribute massively to production and quality.
Look at the most successful companies, and you’ll notice that they will always give those smart people the opportunity to be smart. Often this means giving you and your employee’s space to explore, test new theories, and really have a say about the future of the company.
Create a work culture and environment that lets people use knowledge, even outside of the skills to do the job they currently have. You might be surprised at the results.
It isn’t just about what is on their CV, they bring a lot more to the table than that. Let them use it.
Credit
It is often the case in the early days of a start-up people will use their own personal credit lines to build their business. This is disastrous.
You and your business need to have separate credit lines.
This means a business bank account and business credit card. You should also consider looking for business credit vendors. This will be one of the easiest ways for you to build up your business credit without too much hassle.
Story
The most human element of any business. We are now in the age of authenticity, flexibility, the gig economy, and the need for truth. Customers and clients alike will be more interested in you and your business if they feel like your story and your narrative fits them well.
If you look at some of the most successful companies of the last few years, you will find that they have keen brand awareness, and were always true to their goals. The story of your company will matter.
You and your employees should always go with the ethos that was laid out in your original business plan. Your company story, and your personal story is why people can believe in you and why they feel that your business will benefit them personally.
Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
Taste
This is a lot about design and marketing. People will get a good feel for you and your tastes by what you produce content-wise. You’ll find that some businesses are entirely sleek and use the same format and font in everything – Apple is an excellent example of this.
The colours you choose the slickness of your design and even how you word your text will have an impact on how people behave and if they believe that your company design, and in this case, taste, is to their liking.
A lot of this will come down to how well you cater to your intended audience. You can put the time into market research in the early days, and refine it over time using the actual data that you are able to collect from campaigns and google analytics.
Trust
Well, this isn’t necessarily overlooked it isn’t exactly built into the business plan either. You like your customer’s, investors, and partners to trust you. You also need your employees to trust you too.
This could be as simple as when something goes wrong with the customer you refund them the money that they feel they have lost or if an employee is not feeling very well give them time off to recover. This goes to show you can be trusted to do the right thing – regardless of the bottom line.
You can build trust from the very minute that you open your doors, and you should continue to do business this way for the duration of the business life.
So strangely, the most overlooked part of any business plan tends to be the human factor. We consider money, we think about location, we think about growth strategy, and how PPC and SEO will fit into our content strategy.
Sometimes we even consider the brand of coffee that we will have in our offices. But all of those strategies and tactics will eventually fail unless you are set up for long-lasting success and use these five overlooked things for your new business.
