Starting a business is often the easiest part of the entrepreneurship journey. Once your business is running the hard work starts. If you are renting a space and have employees you will soon realise at the end of the month that entrepreneurship is hard. You will often wonder “why did I start this venture” and even contemplate shutting down. This is a common story we hear and have experienced in one form or another as entrepreneurs.
Thankfully there are a lot of tools out there to help you navigate this often painful experience. All you need is support network around you. The reason why we are focussing on this subject this week is because of the many questions we often receive from aspiring and active entrepreneurs who are joining the Zimbabwe Startup Support Network. Here are some of the questions that are really topical these days:
- How do I start a business?
- How do I register my business?
- How can I access capital?
- How do I develop my market?
- How can I beat the competition?
There are many questions that often bother entrepreneurs and it is impossible to list them all. A closer look at these questions however shows that starting and running a business is very complicated. To understand some of these complexities lets break them down into smaller pieces.
First before you start any business you must have an idea of the aim of your business and what you are trying to achieve (your vision and mission). What problem are you trying to solve and how are you going to get revenue streams to support your business from paying customers. Most entrepreneurs who do not self introspect, fail here and even after investing in equipment or stocks can’t move forward. You can have stocks but if you do not have a target market or willing buyers for these products your business will eventually die.
How do you identify the customers to target? This is a whole subject on its own but you must invest time and resources through research to identify and reach such customers. Any entrepreneur who fails to research and identify their customer profile will waste resources pitching to the wrong customers. Trying to sell to customers who do not use your product results in very few sales and ultimately your business will fail because of this.
If you identify the right targets, the next step is making them an offer they can’t refuse. You must aim to provide value to your customers at a price they are willing to take today and any time they want your product thereafter. Most entrepreneurs waste resources going after new customers at the expense of servicing the customers who have bought from them before. As an entrepreneur you must invest in a customer relationship system that allows you to keep note of your customers and what their needs are.
This article will not be exhaustive but will point you to the areas that you need to invest in, in order to increase your chances of success. Once you have customers in your database you have to methodically ‘mine’ them. You must keep developing and nurturing them. If you already have a business look at your last few sales and identify who has bought from you and you will most likely find out that these customers have bought from you every now and then. Understanding this is key to building repeatable revenue streams and is particularly important in generating additional sales from referrals.
You will notice that as you continue to explore your pool of customers you will identify their additional needs and will most likely get referrals as your business continues to grow. Not understanding this will lead to fewer sales and in most cases leads to your business collapsing as a result.
Most entrepreneurs rush to indicate that their biggest handicap in their business is not having capital. Your biggest asset in your business is your customer base or pipeline of customers who are willing to pay and use your products. There are many ways of accessing capital, but your ability to access these depends on how you can demonstrate to those that can give you capital or accommodate you that you have willing customers ready to pay for the products or services you supplying.
Let us illustrate this with live examples. Companies like Econet demonstrated to investors and equipment suppliers very early in their life that they had a huge and growing customer base and were financed through various structures that included listing on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, lines of credit from banks, and equipment deals with suppliers and so on. If the Econet founder had simply decided to wait for a time he had enough money his dream of building a mobile network, he would not have been able to be where he is today.
Many will say this is easier said than done, it is, most of the time, but, there are plenty of examples in Zimbabwe where businesses where started with little or no capital. Although not having an idea is not enough, founders who start with nothing never stop knocking on the right doors to get what they need done. They do so after doing a lot of home work. Let us look at another example, the Nyaradzo Group, one of the largest funeral services company in Zimbabwe. The group turned 18 years last month and its founder says of the company he founded on its website “It’s about trust and utmost good faith.” He says the bond build with clients has been instrumental in ensuring the continued growth of Nyaradzo.
What many entrepreneurs don’t realise though is it’s also about the entrepreneurs’ vision, fighting spirit and their ability to identify what is missing in their customers’ lives. Any successful business today exists because it manages to repeatedly deliver beyond their customers’ expectations. The economy can be bad but these companies continue to grow!
Despite having competitors why do companies continue to grow? We ask this question because it’s a question many first time entrepreneurs ask us all the time. How do I deal with competition, how do I make my product or service stand out. Although we don’t have all the answers to this question, it is important to focus on the examples we gave in this article of Nyaradzo and Econet. The two companies are both service oriented companies and rely on delivering a quality service to their customers repeatedly to an extent that they become preferred brands in their own right. All of sudden, competition doesn’t matter that much if you have the right offering. Instead of trying to focus on competition, concentrate on developing your product or service. As you grow you can make a lot of noise about your products. Let the product and service you offer speak for itself and your customers will be your best marketers.
If you found this article helpful, share it with others and reach out to us. We would love to hear about some of the problems you are facing as entrepreneur. Go to our website www.cowork.co.zw or call us on 0718924393.
