Alexander Semenov - From idea to first sales. Tips for starting a business from successful entrepreneurs

Write the answers to the questions of the blocks on colored stickers and glue them to each part of our template. Let there be many answers. If there are no answers somewhere, but only questions – write down the questions. At this stage, it is important that there is a lot of material.

After the template is completed, based on what is written in the template, try to tell the story of your business as if it already existed, functioned, and worked. As you talk, move from the right side of the template to the left side of the template. Based on the template, describe your business:

– as its owner

– as a client of this company

– as a competitor or bystander

When you tell and follow what is written, you will surely find more hidden resources, broken connections, inconsistencies, questions. This is all material for you to think carefully and add information to your template.

The last step in working with the template is to commit the plan. Record what decisions came to your mind after you have written the entire template and told the story of your business. Record what you need to do, in what time frame, and how you need to do it. When you have a ready-made plan of action, you can consider that you are already a few steps away from success. But it’s too early to relax, you need to start acting.

Each of you who tried to work with this template has already appreciated how many ideas, thoughts arise along the way, and how difficult it is to «digest» all this material alone. Therefore, it makes sense to go to those people who can help you, who are experts in some kind, who have a lot of life and business experience. But you need to go to these people according to strict rules:

– invite 3 to 6 people to discuss your business idea, if you invite more than 6 people, there is a risk that the discussion may come to a standstill due to a difference of opinion

– define the role of each participant

– describe the basic logic of the template, the questions, and the main areas in this template

– introduce your business idea to the audience based on the template blocks

– enter a ban on criticism. Keep a constructive mindset when working with your business model

– fix all the meanings

– say, «thank you» to everyone who participated in this discussion

Even the best ideas are broken down by reality, even if you have drawn the business model very accurately and clearly, attracted the best experts for advice, the fact is that there are still a few things to consider:

1. Consumer advice. Be attentive to the customers of other companies, because the customer always knows better how to provide him with a service or how best to deliver the goods.

2. External environment. Analyze the environment, look for trends that occur in the economy around us which industries evolve, what industries are in the stage of decline – all this important information, which will allow you time to adjust your actions and make management decisions.

As you move forward with the business model, you have already noticed that this work provides a lot of answers to your questions and helps you make an actual management decision. If you were able to get a complete picture of how your business will function, then you probably already have the answers to these questions:

– Is this my business?

– Can I raise this business or do I need partners? And where should I look for them?

– Do I really want to do business?

– What will my customers get?

– What values do I create in the world, in life, in the market?

But also many other answers. All these answers lead you to the main decision-the willingness to implement your business idea.

There are 3 ways to make money in business:

1. Production:

1) own product

2) product according to the customer’s documents

3) product development for the purpose of selling technology or business

2. Trading:

1) sale of everyday products and distribution of goods of large manufacturers

2) franchise (work under the brand of the product manufacturer)

3) independent purchase of goods from the supplier

4) wholesale trade

5) selling a digital product

3. Provision of services:

1) training

2) consulting

3) preparation and execution of documents

4) representation of the client in relations with third parties

5) body care (treatment, beauty care, fitness, etc.)

6) maintenance of the territory, equipment; household services

7) transportation, logistics services, etc.

All these activities can be divided into 2 classes:

1. You are part of someone else’s big business

2. You are implementing your own entrepreneurial initiative

Task: take a pen, paper, a completed template and see what type of business your business belongs to. This will determine how you will build your future business strategy.

Those of you who decide to do business selling everyday products, your business will be little different from the business of a neighboring outlet. In this case, you do not need to make any large amount of efforts to study your customers, the target audience. Those who offer you goods for sale have long done this for you. Your task in this case is to pay great attention to the location of your outlet, how customers come to your business, how they find you.

There are only three ways to get customers:

1. Point of sale – in the flow of customers, for example, the most crowded street in the city.

2. Attracting Customer Flow to Point of Sale

3. Face-to-face meetings with the client.

When we talk about the target audience, we very often mistakenly define «who is our client.» You need to know four clear characters who are in contact with our product:

1. User (the one for whom the product is made)

2. The one who pays the money. Very often, someone who pays money is not a user, for example, mom buys a toy to her son

3. The person making the purchase decision. It may well be that my mother has money, but the decision to buy a toy is made by dad.

4. The one who gives advice to the person making the purchase decision. For example, a person with whom dad consulted.

Before we go any further, we need you to pay attention to one very important thing: that today we live in a world of oversupply, overproduction, in a world where you can buy everything, there would be money, so now you need to be puzzled not by how to develop your product and «push» it to the market, but by the fact that we discuss every step, every stage of the development of your product-invention with our potential customers and at this stage of discussion we make them our supporters, future buyers.

To solve this problem, several techniques have been devised that allow you to bypass it. One of these methods is called Customer Development. If everyone used to talk about creating a product, now everyone is starting to talk about creating customers. As entrepreneurs, you should not try to find a niche that you will fit into, but create your own niche. When developing a product, you need to interact with your future customers, studying their demand at every step, at every movement around the development of your product. You need to create this audience that will buy from you. Remember that a product is a fairly broad concept. It can be anything you produce, whether it’s buns or a service.