Success in anything – sports, raising children, learning or business is driven by fundamental principles that need to be applied with balance and moderation. A conceptual understanding of what to do is not enough. You need to take action – your ability to achieve business success lies in developing a strategy based on four vital principles. Here are the wisdom nuggets you must unpack in order to establish a striving business that will last decades and decades to come. The list goes as follows :
1) You need a good plan
Every successful business shift begins with a good theory. It does not need to be sexy. It does not need to be insightful and give you a map of what to do next, what not to do next and what value needs to be created through which channels going forward. Leverage foresight, insight and hindsight to formulate a mental model and hypothesize that relates to your market.
2) Taking untested products to market
The fact that too many start-ups begin with an idea for a product that they think people want, spending months or even years perfecting that product without ever testing it in the market with prospective customers. When they fail to reach broad uptake from customers, it is often because they never spoke to prospective customers and determined whether or not the product was interesting. The earlier you can determine customer feedback, the quicker you can adjust your model to suit market needs.
It is easy to come up with fancy terms and names. If your customers do not understand exactly what you do though, it is meaningless. Take note of this, business does not sell services but a solution. When you sell a solution, you are talking about your clients needs instead of what your business does.
3) Partnerships drive success
It is very important to work with the right partners who are reliable and has the right tools to help and enhance your business.
Beyond your own organisation, when you work with the collective you stand a better change of succeeding. More minds are better than one because they bring about diversity of ideas and ways of doing things. Therefore, surround yourself with positive people and critically support them in their business as well. When you build partnerships between between corporates and SMEs, you increase the chances of leveraging off one another, learning lessons, sharing risks and driving shared success and growth. Focus on developing long – term relationships whenever you can because it easy to walk with other entrepreneurs.
4) Hire carefully
As a start-up, we hire a lot of young and inexperienced employees especially those who are coming from schools (high school, college or university). The company will train and help them to grow in their career of expertise. However, the company will be spending money a lot of time and money investing in their employees. Once, they have gained some experience, they can go to bigger corporations. It is wise to hire employees who are committed for the long term and it is even worth including a clause in employee contracts that state that employees need to repay the cost of training if they leave the business within a certain period.
Written by
Rudzai Magwabeni