Revenue First Sales Startup Strategy
One of the best ways to achieve entrepreneurial success is to anticipate and correct problems associated with achieving sales traction by looking at your sales process before starting your business. Regardless of who will be selling your product offering or how it’s going to be sold, be sure to spend time developing a coherent sales strategy…
Keep readingWrite Content Using Buyer Journey Funnels
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience and to influence profitable customer action.
Keep readingThoughts On Business Startups
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, just under 5 million new businesses were launched between January 2021 and November 2021—an increase of 55% compared to the same period in 2019. Most of these new companies are being launched by first-time entrepreneurs. A recent survey released by Digital.com reveals that 32% of Americans planning to start a…
Keep readingThe Funding Paradox
You need to show you can make money to raise money, but you need to raise money to develop and sell the product/service offering to make the money to show the investors. This is not the first time this paradox has suddenly dropped into an entrepreneur’s lap. In fact, it’s a cycle that I have witnessed…
Keep readingBusiness Sale Pre-Planning Steps
A recent M&A Source study found that about 80 % of businesses on the market will never sell. This should be a huge wakeup call for all business owners. This means you have less than a 20% chance of success if you go to sell your company. One of the reasons for this is that owners…
Keep readingAssessing A Company’s Health Using Financial Analysis
By themselves, financial statements tell you quite a bit…like, how much profit the company made, where it spent its money, how large its debts are. But how do you interpret all the numbers these statements provide? Is the level of debt healthy or not? If you’re looking to assess the health of your company & identify…
Keep readingThoughts About The Cash Flow Statement
Differentiating between one-time and ongoing expenses is key. One-time costs include obtaining assets like equipment or machinery, but may also involve licenses or permits for certain businesses. These costs usually occur during the startup phase or when a business expands. Expenses that must be paid monthly or periodically (like quarterly) represent ongoing costs. Variable costs, however, will fluctuate…
Keep readingThoughts About The Income Statement
Of the three main financial statements, the income statement generally has the greatest bearing on a manager’s job. That’s because most managers are responsible in some way for one or more of its elements: Generating revenue. In one sense, nearly everyone in a company helps generate revenue…the people who design and produce the goods or deliver…
Keep readingThoughts About The Balance Sheet
It is important to understand how to use balance sheet ratios in managing your own business area. Let’s start by looking at a couple of ways in which balance sheet figures indicate how efficiently a company is operating. Working capital. Subtracting current liabilities from current assets gives you the company’s net working capital, or the amount…
Keep readingEvolving Markets Implies Changing Strategy & Tactics
Business conditions keep changing: successful new products attract competitors; more legacy brands are moving to D2C; businesses within every industry are adjusting to a transformed customer base; consumers are rejecting “stuff” in favor of experiences. We’re already in the middle of the most disruptive decade yet. Business owners have to be ready for whatever comes next.…
Keep readingBusiness Values Analogy
In past videos, workshops and blogs, I have discussed a real-time strategic business planning process. It starts with a business concept vision that is overlaid upon SWOT analysis and typical business areas like values, goals and constraints to arrive at a unified plan. Today, I would like to focus on that tough-to-define word…values. Instead of asking what…
Keep readingVetting A Business Model Concept Using Industry Fit
Vetting a business model concept requires critical thinking about how the it fits into the industry as a whole. One way to do think about this is by using SWOT analysis to provide a systematic view of the five industry components that affect your business model concept. Industry SWOT analysis helps you anticipate and adjust your…
Keep readingVetting A Business Model Concept Using Pricing
In several recent thought posts on vetting a business model concept, I focused on defining the market size and positioning as key elements of a business model concept vetting feasibility analysis. Another key step in the vetting process is to critically think about how you can create/deliver the offered product/service to the identified customer target at…
Keep readingVetting A Business Model Concept Using Market Positioning
In the recent post of this series on vetting your business model concept, I focused on defining the market size as one element in a business model concept vetting feasibility analysis. When discussing market strategy of a business model, it’s inevitable that positioning will be brought up. A company’s positioning strategy is affected by a number…
Keep readingBusiness Startup Myths
Have you been tempted to start a business but don’t because you heard that the large majority of them fail? The biggest reality in business ownership is: about 1/2 (49%) of new businesses fail within the first 5 years. Actually, these are GREAT success results…far better than you get in Los Vegas. The four main reasons…
Keep readingVetting A Business Model Concept Using Market Size
Many first time entrepreneurs make the mistake of going directly from idea to business plan and implementation. Without first “vetting” the business idea, entrepreneurs increase the chance of losing time and money. The vetting process may include validating the product/service value proposition by customer testing using the least costly modeling method (minimal viable product) to find…
Keep readingLoading…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.