Now a day startups have become the resort of launching businesses for various business aspirants, management professionals, technology enthusiasts and others. In India with the launch of many programmes’ by the government especially like Startup India Standup India and Make in India campaign, the start-up hubs like Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai and even other cities like Jaipur, Lucknow, Bhopal, have seen a phenomenal influx of new ideas. On the flip side, whether it is technology, science or e-commerce, in spite of many success stories, many good startups also fail to grow their business. There are various reasons that attributes to the failure of various startups. It may be because of the wrong market approach, motivation in wrong direction and wrong target to market.
Therefore, we came up with top 10 ways using which a startup can boost their business strategy and help their idea grow faster:
- Well define your business: Before you start your business, define it well, like what is all about your business, if it is a product based business or a service based business, how it is different and so on. If it is a service, define how it will serve people in the right way. Clearly chart out your USP so that the target audience understands your business very well. Make sure your business is well defined and it is easily understood by your employees and the people in general.
- Define your Goals and policies: Well define your goals and policies like what your goal is and what you want to achieve as a company. Also clearly define what your policies for achieving your goal are. It must be a goal-oriented procedure, specific to the aim and aspiration of your company. For example; if you are in e-commerce industry your purpose to do online business is understood by the term e-commerce itself but by clearly defining your goals and policies, your customers would gain a clear clarity on the process of your business as well.
- Do extensive research on your market strategy: Make extensive research on your market strategy because once you do a good research on your market strategy, it will help you in framing your ideas according to the needs of your consumer. It should match with the ground reality of your product and service then only it will work and prove financially beneficial for your business.
- Define your potential customers: Do a good research on your potential customers and define them as well. It will prove very beneficial because once you know your potential customer, it will be easy for you to frame your business strategies according to the needs of your potential customers. Once you succeed in doing so it will definitely form a customer base for your company and it will be beneficial for both your short and long term goals..
- Maintain an internal code for employees: Being a startup has both advantage and disadvantage too in terms of hiring employees and maintaining the pool of talents but it is necessary to set a standard for your company from the beginning itself. For doing so, set and maintain an internal code of ethics for employees. Internal code is the set of rules that employees are bound to follow, like prohibition of any kind of discrimination on any ground, use of abusive language and acceptable behavior among the employees themselves, etc. If you are doing so as a startup then you are setting a benchmark of your company from the beginning itself. In longer term, it will prove to be an added benefit for your company.
- Maintain a code of ethics and moral for your business to set apart from others: Maintaining a code of ethics and moral for your business is as much important as it is in maintaining an internal code of ethics for employees because it is the step that sets apart your business and shows how different it is from others. Don’t rush for profit making at the cost of losing the quality of your product and service instead give more focus to quality than the quantity from beginning itself. You might earn less and make less profit in the beginning but it will form a potential customer base for your company. In longer term when once you have formed your own market for your product and service, then you can increase your price step by step but again do not compromise in quality at the cost of profit making.
- Form an internal PR Team: Being a startup you cannot afford to hire any big public relations agency or even in starting you can’t even think of hiring any public relations company. To overcome this problem, forming and managing an internal public relations team is the solution for this problem. You can do so by selecting a group of people who are good at communication, public speaking, approaching skills and managing things on overall basis. These people can speak in public and media as well from time to time. They can try to establish good relations with media people. This will help your company to reach people on a broader scale and establish the visibility for your company.
- Form an internal committee for managing startup crisis: Being a startup you come across various crisis like hiring good candidates and maintaining them, managing financial crisis and company infrastructure, doing effective cost management, lead management, etc. To overcome this kind of problem, form an internal committee of selected people who are capable enough to handle any such crisis. For example, if it is financial crisis these people can manage to find sponsor for your business. If it is not possible, they can manage to find investor or partner for your company or else they are themselves enough capable to manage the money crisis whether it is by looking for loan from the bank or any other avenues. In short, form a group of such kind of people who are ready to take risk and manage things.
- Work in Team: Working with team effort always proves as a secret for the overall success of the business. Create a team spirit among your employees and boost their team moral from time to time. By doing so, you are giving strength to their potential. You can have office party and small get together for your employees and staff. It will establish good relations of employees with your company. These small activities will profit your company in a bigger way in the long term.
- Manage regular feedback: Last but not the least managing regular feedback of employees and staff and your shareholders as well as your nearby community is of outmost important because these are the people who are directly involved in your business. Your business will grow on their shoulders so keeping a good track record will prove very useful in taking right step for better management of employees & staff who are considered as the internal public and general public as well who are considered your external public. Each one of these people is directly or indirectly responsible for the execution of your business operations.
(Written by Jayant Mehrotra, founder of My Trade Box , India’s first assisted Bulk Buying e-commerce startup)
