Archive for September 2011
Business Plans – Essential Elements and Your Business Profile
Your business plan and business profile is the roadmap that you will follow not only in the beginning of your company, but throughout your time in business. Therefore, it is essential that this plan be well-developed, focused, and detailed enough to serve as a planning tool and as a reference as well.
Your business plan format should be a careful, systematic evaluation of factors that are both critical and suitable to your business purposes and goals. You should strive to include topics that can be tailored to fit your plan. Maintaining focus on the specialized market that you plan to serve is another imperative factor as you define and describe your business and how you plan to proceed with your plan-which is precisely what you will do with your developed business plan. Following here is a break-down of what should be included in your business plan and profile.
Cash Flow Assessment
You absolutely need to take the time to sit down and project your first year of cash flow, based on projected sales, profits, and expenses. This cash flow assessment should include
o Your capital requirements
o Marketing plans
o Realistic projections of sales and profits
o Plans for expansion
o Your assessments of what could possibly go wrong and how you would handle certain problems
There are many small business websites and government resources on the local, state, and national level (for all locations) that can help you learn more about developing the cash flow assessment portion of your business plan.
Market And Economic Assessments
You must put time into researching your target market. You need to know how your business is appropriate for specific demographics and which ones you’ll deal with. You also need to learn about what costs and expenses those demographics can afford, and what demand they have for your service or products. Demographic studies should be cited and a summary of your research needs to be included to show that you have developed a way to serve a need that is either in demand or will be once available. Local planning departments are one resource for finding demographics for things such as population and population break-downs, household demographics, and more. Trade associations are good resources for information related to supply, demand, and target market characteristics.
Meeting Regulatory Requirements
Some businesses have very few regulatory requirements while others bear quite a large burden. Your role is to know what you are responsible for in your line of business. This knowledge should be represented in your business plan, and you need to account for the costs and expenses relative to them. Include information such as
o Which agencies regulate your industry
o Which specific regulations you need to meet
o Licensing requirements
o Fees and costs
o Regulatory or licensing requirements that you have already fulfilled
o Plan for meeting outstanding obligations
Including Yourself And Others In The Plan
Naturally, the key factor in achieving business success is YOU. Sit down and focus on skills and experiences of the past pertaining to your new business. Prepare a resume for yourself and others who may be involved with your business; ensure it is strongly written as your plan will be reviewed carefully by those you look to forge business relationships with such as vendors, investors, and lenders. If you aren’t skilled at preparing resumes, there are many virtual assistants and ghostwriters who will be more than happy to accept you as their client; otherwise there are many books and online resources to assist you.
As you write your resume, be honest and don’t write any untrue information; if there is a particular function you lack the ability to perform, be sure to include this in your business plan, and address how the need will be filled. Your resume and business plan should inspire confidence for both what you do and do not know, and the skill you show in fulfilling all needs of your business.
Five Steps To Successfully Create A Business Plan
1. Sit down, relax, focus, and concisely describe your business concept-put it down on paper!
2. Perform research and due diligence, and gather as much data as you possibly can.
3. Based upon data you have accumulated focus and redefine your business concept.
4. Outline the specifics of your business, utilizing the “who, what, when, where, why, and how” approach; make sure all of these answers are provided within the text of the plan.
5. Proof and adjust your business plan.
In both the short- and the long-run, arranging your business plan into a compelling form not only provides insight and focus to you, but becomes a valuable tool when dealing with business partners and developing relationships that will become important to you.
Necessary Factors Contributing To Business Success
o Understand your market
Researching your target market and their needs is imperative. Find ways to test market your product or service before starting your business.
o Financial control
You’ll find out sooner than later the importance of accounting, cash flow management, and computer software; many entrepreneurs don’t have accounting backgrounds and either need to learn those skills, or find the right tools and professionals to perform those functions. Still, at some level you must be involved so that those professionals and programs get the most accurate information possible and you stay abreast of how your company is doing.
o Anticipating change
Your original business plan will lay the foundation for your business, but over time, perhaps even before your business gets started, there will be many changes you must adapt to. Obtaining a certain mindset and being prepared for changing circumstances will only expand your knowledge and your success.
Small Business Problems
Small businesses are constantly faced with problems before they can claim success. However, the difference between a well run business and one that is not is how they tackle their problems. They can often be faced with financial problems. Since business has its good and challenging months you may be swamped with bills when the tough months come. There are wages, rent etc to be paid and you don’t know where to get the money. It is therefore advisable to always have an emergency account that can cushion you through the tough months.
Incompetent employees are yet another problem faced by small businesses. In comparison to larger companies, small businesses have a high employee turnover. It is always a real challenge for the business owners to get reliable and trustworthy employees. You may have employees who lie to customers about specific products or services for their own selfish gain. Unfortunately it is you who will end up “looking bad.”
Customers can also be a source of problems for the small business. This is because sometimes you could have an in house problem like the office machinery lets you down and you cannot give your customer the service they require. Many customers get easily irritated and may think you cannot effectively run your business. They may even ask for their money back.
You can also be faced with problems if your suppliers do not deliver on time or as agreed on. This can be really frustrating and nerve racking especially if it is an order that is being waited for. Your family can also be a part of the problem especially if they are not willing to understand why you work so hard or late. They may begin to feel that they are secondary in your life. It is even difficult to go on vacation because you are constantly “on call”. You should be ready to make sacrifices if you want to succeed in your business.
Online Business: How to Sell T Shirts Online
Knowing how to sell t-shirts online could provide you with a turnkey online business that takes little maintenance other than advertising your website. There are many advertising techniques available that you can use to promote an online t-shirt business, and many of these are free and hence involving no advance outlay by you. So how do you start selling t-shirts online?
1. Find a Supplier
Like any retail business operating on the internet, you have to find a supplier of the t-shirts. Few online businesses actually manufacture the articles they sell themselves. The product is produced by others and sold by you, and you either pay for stock that you the resell at a profit or you operate on a drops hipping basis where you take the orders and the supplier delivers. You then either receive payment and pay the supplier their invoice or it works the other way around, and the supplier collects the payment and then pays you.
2. Get Products to Sell
Check out the standard stock and designs and then advertise these along with your own offer to customize the logo and text as required by the customer. You can then put these offers on your website. This involves setting up your own website, auto responders, shopping cart and payment portal all of which can be very expensive.
The alternative is to sell t-shirts online using a website supplied by the t-shirt provider – that will have all of these elements already installed, and will cost you nothing. Orders placed will be passed automatically from your website to the supplier who will collect the payment deliver the product directly to the customer, and then pay you each month. This is the best option for those with little online marketing experience.
3. Get a Domain Name for your Website
You will need to get your own domain name, but that isn’t difficult to do. Go Daddy or any of the other domain name registration firms online will be able to register a domain name for you at under $10/month for a.com name. Domains Bot will be able to spin a few domains for you from your initial keyword input and tell you what names are available to use. You can normally choose a template for your website and change its colors if you want.
4. Get Your Designs
Get your own designs together. You might be given some designs to start with or you may have to use your own designs from the beginning. It’s generally better if you can get your own designs together because then you will be offering something unique when you sell t-shirts online. That is important.
5. Open a PayPal account.
You might have heard bad things from some people about PayPal, but it is generally a good way of paying and accepting payments. Unless you want to pay a great deal of money for a merchant account enabling you to accept credit and debit cards, PayPal is the best available. You will find that most people buying and selling online use it and that your supplier will also likely want paid using PayPal.
6. Advertise your Website
You have a website, but to sell t-shirts online you then have to advertise your website. There are many ways to do this such as pay per click and paid adverts but these two techniques cost money. Article marketing is free and you could also run a blog using Blogger or Word press (both free), on which you can promote your website, products and also offer useful information about using t-shirts for publicity, commemorative and other purposes.
7. Wait for Customers
Sit back and wait for the money. It is slightly more complex than that in that you have a certain amount of work to do, such as designing the t-shirts, and advertising your website or writing the blog, but there is no need to carry out complex or expensive promotions.
You also have to set your prices based upon your wholesale prices. The wholesale price for a printed green t-shirt might be $17, so you can charge $34 for it and make 100% markup. You could offer a special promotion at $25 and still make $8 on the sale. You could also create a membership site where your members pay a monthly fee and are given for example, t-shirts free for their membership or at silly price such as $5. The minimum you can charge without making a loss is $17 for the above example, so you would still gain if the membership was $20 monthly.
The simplest way to sell t-shirts online, and use it as a money-making online business, is to offer the shirts at 100% over the wholesale price. Use your site as a simple retail website, and once you are making sufficient money online you can break out and expand into other areas such as general apparel, other merchandise or other printed promotional items for corporate events.
For now however, if you want your own online business then learn how to sell t-shirts online and follow the above steps and you will have made a good start.