Business Savvy?
I have been in business for many years and have had a number of businesses. Each business presented its own challenges. I did not go into a business completely blind and sized up the opportunities it could bring. I did not have the money to spend on a business consultant but I did develop a business plan. Not because I was after a loan from the bank but more to ensure that I set targets to achieve. This eanabled me to measure my progress against those targets to have a better chance of achieving my aims. I guess it came back to the old adage “if you fail to plan you plan to fail”.
I was very mindful of the fact that 80% of start up businesses fail in the first year and a significant number of the survivors will go on to fail in subsequent years. I did not want to put my families future in jeopardy and thought that a careful plan with both strategic and tactical steps combined with hard work would prevail no matter what. Some would say that is naive because hard work does not gurantee success if mis-directed. The factors that impinge are the myriad returns required by government agencies both local and federal and of course payment of all required licences and taxes.
Fast Tracking
The first business I owned was a stationery store. I bought it on the cheap based on the stock at 50% of the wholesale price. The owner an elderly chap wanted to retire and the income was barely enough to cover the rent and expenses much less the wages or salaries. He had had enough and simply wanted out. Not a great deal of capital was required and there was no goodwill to pay. The store was reasonably well located in a shopping centre and had a frontage to the main street as well. However I had to move fast otherwise I would run out of capital. I had never attempted cold calling on clients so it was with some trepidation that I compiled a monthly specials sheet with the help of some of the suppliers. Printed it on coloured paper double sided and went calling. Scared out of my wits but I rationalised that I could get is a “no thanks” at best or at worst be shown the door and asked not to return again. However I could also receive an order or a maybe “let me think about it”. I decided to call on local businesses around town and give them the special sheet and if they were interested tell them who we were. I made a up daily list of the businesses to visit and decided that each would be visited once a month for three months. If there was no order I would strike them off the list and visit another business. I offered free delivery for orders of $25 or more and confined my activities to an outside radius of approximately 20 kilometres or 12 miles. For those who showed interest I also gave them a full listing of the products in the store and prices.
Results
The results were amazing. I came back the first day with about $500 worth of orders. I was over the moon. It boosted my confidence. Not one business showed me the door. They all took the sheet. Many of course did not act or had other stationery suppliers. But I stuck to the routine and if there was no order after 3 attempts they were struck off the list. Surprisingly I received calls from some of those businesses when I stopped calling to tell me that they had decided to put an order together and it was waiting for me or they phoned it through. Within a space of four months I had quadrupled the turnover of the business. My wife and one of my daughters manned the store while I was out and about. I was soon able to hire additional staff. I sold the business several years later and made a handsome profit. The new owner decide that the rent was too much were the store was thereby losing valuable passing trade and decided that he did not have to go out and visit his clients and that he did not really need the staff I had. He went bust 18 months later. Can we learn from that? You bet. Planning and application worked for me – sitting back and hoping it will work and continue to make you money did not. So this site is dedicated to putting forward simple business ideas through articles and ideas.
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