Sixteen Easy Steps to Set-up New Business

Steps to set-up new Business:

Starting a business is dream of every person. But before starting, you need to prepare yourself mentally and financially. Without proper preparation, it may be like double edge sword. You need to prepare yourself before indulging into any type of business.

Here we are providing you quick sixteen step to start your business. You can start your business by following these steps.

1. Conduct Market Research
2. Prepare a business plan
3. Financial Arrangement
4. Search for Premises, Plant, Office or Shop:
5. Choose unique name for your business
6. Trademark Registration
7. Registration and other Licenses/Registration
8. Choose Products/Services to launch
9. Name your products/services
10. Recruit office staff if required
11. Execute your business strategy properly
12. Promotion and marketing of your business
13. Delivery- Build Distribution Channel
14. Recruit Sales Team
15. Start Taking Orders
16. Closing the sale (Supply Goods/services and collect payment)

Conduct Market Research:

First step for starting any type of business is to conduct research of that business. Whether you are working in the field or not, you need to do some home work and research about how can you start business in that field?

Market research is a process of gathering information which makes you aware about basic fundaments of business you are going to start. What customer wants, how other businesses are doing, what you can do to differentiate you from your competitors,latest market trends, profit margin, risk factors, minimum investment required, licenses and permission required, best possible products and services, from where to start and lot more.

Market research is based upon two types of data: Primary Research Data and Secondary Research Data.

Primary research data is information directly collected from your proposed customers. You can collect this information by yourself or hire someone else to collect these information for you via surveys, focus groups and other methods etc. Primary research could also be telephonic discussion, online polls or even study of your own sales records.

Secondary research data is information collected from research papers, statistics, reports available at other organization websites or blog written about industry etc.

Basic questions about your market research include:

• What is your customer base?
• What do they buy?
• Why they do buy?
• What will make them buy from you?

Check out video of Market Research here

Prepare a Business Plan:

Once you have completed your market research, now second step is to write a business plan based upon your research.

A business plan is a live written document of your business’s future which outlines a plan for your short term goals and long term goal. It outlines the step by step procedure while developing your business. A good business plan is simple and easy to understandable by yourself and your team.

You don’t need to prepare a detailed business plan, you can keep it short and simple in starting and add & edit it timely as per your need and future prospective.

Things to write in business plan:

• Business Summary in single line
• Mission and vision statements
• Nature of business i.e. manufacturing, marketing, retail, distribution etc
• Registration and licenses required
• Proposed Customer Base
• Marketing strategy to be implemented
• Products to be launched
• Territory covered in starting and gradually expansion
• Sales Team
• Proposed investment required
• Sources of investment
• Operating capital planning
• Distribution channel to be adopted
• What you will provide better from your competitor to encourage customer to buy your products etc

Complete article about  Business Plan read here

Financial Arrangement:

Finance is must for starting any type of business. Without finance is become difficult to start and survive in competitive market. You need to make a statement about your financial arrangement. You have idea about investment required to start your business after market research and preparing business plan.

Now you need to arrange or find the sources for financial investment into your proposed business. There may be many ways to arrange finance. Depend upon your business or business need you can choose one or more as per availability. Few we are describing here:

• Bank Loan
• Investor
• Own Saving
• Borrow/mortgage
• Vendor’s credit etc

Check out in detail: Arrange Finance for Business

Search for Premises, Plant, Office or Shop:

(Remember world’s today top most companies were started from garage)

Once you have completed above steps and ready to start your business. You will need an office in case of company set-up, shop in case of retail, wholesale or any similar type of business. Depend upon business nature plan for space.

Premises may be owned, rented or lease basis. If you don’t have own arrangement for space, you can go for rented place or lease agreement to lowdown the initial investment.

If you want to start manufacturing then you will require havingpremises to compile with law and regulations applicable at manufacturing of those products. Space requirement may vary depend upon your business type and business need. Read in detail: Finding a premises for Business

Choose Unique Name for Business:

Most of persons have chosen name of business at first. But we are putting it at fifth place because name matters but not more than above critical steps. A simple name can become brand if business plan executed wisely and a good name fail to compile with expectation without proper home work.

Choosing a business name is also one of the initial steps toward your business set-up goal. A good business name has some qualities. Here we are discussing few character sticks a business name should have:

• It should satisfy your business identity needs
• It should be unique
• It should have limited alphabets
• It should be easily remember able and pronounceable
• It should avoid any silent character
• It should be related to your business
• It should be technical and professional in nature

Based upon above mentioned qualities, you can check your business name. You can choose business name based on a famous word, any relative name or by mixing different words/alphabets.
Check out: How to name your business

Trademark Registration:

After choosing a name, your next step is to protect it from coping and misuse. You are going to invest time and money behind this name. Protection of this name is necessary for you. For protecting your name, you need to apply for trademark registration. Trademark registration will protect your intellectual property i.e. your business name. Complete detail about: Trademark Registration here

Registration and Licenses:

Next step is to take necessary registrations and licenses if required to start your business. Some businesses are regulated and licenses required conducting businesses in those sectors. For example, if you want to start pharmaceutical sector related business, and then you need to require taking license for manufacturing, wholesale/distribution, retail respectively. But for ayurvedic business, you need to require license only for manufacturing business but not for wholesale/distribution and retail business.You need to check for all formalities and requirements related to your business before indulging into it.

For businesses above 40 lakh annual turnover in India, you will require to take Goods and Service Tax Identification Number (GSTIN). For supply interstate or online selling business, you will also require to take GST number at any value of annual turnover. 

Complete detail about Registrations and Licenses here

Choose Products/Services to launch:

You have prepared a detailed list of services/products in business plan that you want to conduct business or launch. But all is not possible to start initially. At this level, you need to prioritize products/services. You have to choose which are most important and need to start with at initial level. Gradually you can add more product/services in your portfolio.

You can start with highly demandable products (most probably will face high competition) or with products having sustain demand but low competition. The choice is yours. Product choice should be based upon your key strengths and understanding of market.

Before selection of any product, you need to analysis few important aspects like:

• Is there demand for the product at the price you are going to sell it?
• Is it possible for you to make profit from that product/service for running your business?
• Is the market size of products/services enough so you can advertise, sell and deliver the product at a reasonable price?

Check in detail: Product Selection for Business/Start-up

Name your products/Services:

Once you have decided to launch products. Now it’s time to name your products/services. Like we have discussed in our name your business section, name of products/services is equally matter. In case of product name selection, you may consider following character sticks before deciding your products/services name:

• Is it satisfying your product/service identity needs?
• Is it unique from other available name in same segment?
• How many alphabets it has?
• Is it easily remember able and pronounceable?
• Is it has any silent alphabet?
• Is it related to your business?
• Is It technical and professional in nature?

Check out in detail about: How to name a Product and Service

Recruit office staff if required:

At initial level, you may require to recruit office staff or not, depend at your business level. But you should try to recruit only urgently required staff. You may skip some positions and merge departments to reduce man power in starting to lowdown operating cost for your business. Detailed article about: Recruiting Staff/Employee

Execute your business strategy properly:

You have done documentation, licenses and other formalities. You are now in get set mode. It’s time to give picture to your imaginations. Business plan you have done in primary steps. Now it’s time to implement your business strategies into execution. Launch your products or services.

Around eighty-percent of businesses fail at the execution part. Your all above steps are waste if you fail to execute your business plan, your idea, your strategy effectively. You may lack in infrastructure, you may start from garage or dying room, you may not have enough money, you may lack in resources. All these will not stop you from succeeding but lacking in execution will do game over.

For executing your business strategy effectively you need to set clear priorities and work as you planned. Setting priorities means if you want to start with predefined territories and products/services then concentrate at only those only. Don’t try to penetrate at territories outside you decide. Once you have established these, you can move forward to other territories.

Likewise, you planned to sell products by appointing franchisee. Then you need only to focus at finding franchisee partners, not everyone to sell your products. You need to focus only at one distribution ways at one time.
Detail about: Execute your business strategy Effectively

Promotion and Marketing of your Business:

The goal of promotion and marketing is to make public aware about your products and services. Promotion and marketing helps to influence customers to purchase it and to establish a long-term relationship that will make them repeat customers.

Promotion and marketing can be done by two ways:

• Online
• Offline

Based upon you business need, marketing budget and best suitable type, you can choose either one or both. Most common used promotion types are:

Online Promotional Tools

• Digital Marketing like Blogging and Content Marketing, Use of Social Media Channels (Free and Paid Promotion) i.e. Facebook Page, Facebook Group, Youtube Channel, Linkedin Profile etc )
• Own website building and promote it through SEO, paid ads etc
• Listing at business portals and classified websites
• Google my business account set-up
• E-mail marketing
• Influencer Marketing

Offline Promotional Tools

• Print media advertisement, TV commercials/Sponsored Programs, health magazines advertisementsetc
• Banners/Holding advertisements
• Radio advertisement
• Franchise outlets
• Direct Selling Business / Multi-Level Marketing
• Tele-marketing and SMS/What-app marketing
• Educational Seminars, Promotional Events and Expo, trade fairs
• Door to Door Marketing

Check in detail about: Promotion and Marketing of Business

Delivery- Build a distribution channel:

Strong distribution channel is foundation to deliver goods/services to right customer at desired time. You need to build a strong distribution channel irrespective of your industry. Structure of distribution channel will vary depend at your products and services.

For setting up a distribution channel, you need to check following things:

1. Who is end user? (Vary according to your industry, in case of pharmaceutical sector, patients are end user but you need to make it available at chemist/pharmacies to sell, not general stores. So you should evaluate the end user.
2. Potential distribution intermediaries (Direct selling to end consumers or indirect selling through distributors, wholesaler, retailers etc)
3. How can you narrow your distribution channel without effecting customer’s experience?

More about setting up: Supply Chain: Set-up a Distribution Channel

Recruit Sales Team:

At initial level, either you can choose to recruit sales team/person or you can handle this work for yourself. You will need a person we will handle this part of your business. It may be you or any other. Sales is life support for any business. Sales is the only department that generate revenue and rests all departments’ works as supporting part and they are consumers or expenses for a company.

Marketing and promotion will only aware customers about your products, sales is the activities that is connected to actual selling of goods/services and collecting the payment.

Depend upon your business; you may prefer to recruit sales team/person for inside sales or outside sales. Inside sales is referred to the sales activity performed from office through electronic means or digital means and outside sales is referred to the sales activity in which sales person meet face to face to the client.  Check out in detail about: Recruiting Sales Staff 

Start Taking Orders:

It’s time to roll your shirt sleeves and work at ground level. Meet prospects or make sales calls. Start taking orders for your product/services. You should start taking order only after you are in position to fulfill that efficiently and timely. Otherwise if you fail to fulfill your initial orders at time, you may lose some potential clients forever.

Without product in stock or not in position to provide a particular service to client, you shouldn’t reach to prospect for collecting orders. First you need to create strong back hand and then work at ground level to collect the orders. Check out in detail: Start taking Orders

Closing the Sale:

Closing a sale is referred to complete a sales transaction i.e. supply the goods or provide the services and collect the payment. Once you have completed a sales transaction, you have completed your business set-up process. Now it’s time to make long term relationships with existing customers and finding new customers and close more sales. Check out in detail about Closing the sale (Supply Goods/services and collect payment)



Hope above information is helpful to you…

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• How to start Medicine Business?

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