The design of a prospering business

Good marketing will help you get more focused leads, but it is important to manage your leads in a well thought out sales process to win more deals.

With a myriad of parameters to create sales, marketing and business growth and to brand your product and attract new customers, how do you choose the right tactics with the highest rate of return?

Most small businesses operate on a reduction in liquidity and resources, so there is little room for many attempts to create growth. To get it right the first time is critical.

It is simply not enough to work hard, you also need to work smart and focus on the most important activities that affect your business success.

What kind of growth activities that have the greatest impact?

Among these key activities include: market understanding, focused strategy, creative product and sales-/marketing management. Among other things, thus you can design your own luck.

Perseverance and confidence are also important ingredients. But it is important to be prepared to tackle the many opportunities and threats coming. Rate is at risk of moving too much in a zig-zag, if there is a focus plane running after. The limited resources could be used to hunt various exciting new opportunities where you do not have a sufficient competitive advantage.

How do you create a good roadmap?

Start by identifying your customers or target groups and decision-making processes. The more you know about your customers, the better you are able to develop your product or service based on their needs. Your knowledge should be based on sound market knowledge (eg customer surveys, interviews, focus groups) and not just good “gut feeling”.

Your research will ensure that you clearly understand buyers’ behavior and decision-making processes, including:

What problems customers want solved?
What influences their buying behavior?
What are the sources they use to find information about options, your business and your competitors?

Next, you must carefully assess your own company’s strengths and weaknesses. What is your organization really strong for? Further, if your team of technicians and developers and / or a strong sales team? What skills and expertise deficiencies that would make it difficult to realize the dividends, customers and prospects want? This honest assessment will help you decide what is the best business model for your company to provide competitive solutions and what changes you might need to make the employees.

Now you assess the external part. How will the market do? How positions your competitors are and how strong is their services and solution offerings? Are they targeting specific markets that are similar or completely different from the customers you focus on? Are there changes in the industry (eg regulations, economic factors) that affect your growth potential?

Finally, you combine the knowledge you have gained to determine your unique offer value (value proposition) – that is how you differentiate your performance, so the opposite of customers appears as a “need to have” needs rather than a “nice to have” needs . Only the first release sufficient purchasing decisions to ensure your growth.

Once you have a clear understanding of your customer value and competitive advantage, you will have a good basis to develop the right sales and marketing initiatives and thus your business. This knowledge will help you determine which products and services they should focus on, and which lesser or dropped, as their value does not match the needs of your customers and your value proposition. It will also help you determine which segments to focus on how to deal with them and you need to make changes to your team. This is among the key elements in designing a successful business plan.