Start a Small Business

The complete guide to starting a business

David Weller, Vera Hughes

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781473609181
• eBook ISBN: 9781473609198
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Small Business
• Index: Business

'Hits the bull's-eye with every chapter... Very highly recommended.' - The IndependentThis is a fully updated new edition of the bestselling guide for anyone who is thinking of starting their own business. It covers both the strategic and practical issues in the ideal level of detail for budding entrepreneurs, and is full of insider tips which will help give your business the edge in a tough marketplace.

1

The first step

In this chapter you will learn:

• How to carry out some basic market research to see whether your business plan has a future

• How to research and deal with suppliers, including those based overseas

• How to set up a pilot scheme to check whether your business is viable

• How to assess your own suitability for setting up a small business.

The first thing anyone needs before setting up any kind of business is an idea, or more precisely the idea of starting in business at all. Before the idea takes over too much, you need to ask yourself certain questions, which are:

• What precisely is the product or service I am going to offer?

• Why should customers buy my product or service rather than those that exist already?

The selling points

To help answer these questions, complete this questionnaire for your product or service.

Self-assessment: Identify your product and customers

1 What is your product or service?

2 What are its main selling points?

3 Who will your customers be?

4 What is their age range?

5 What is their income bracket?

6 Are they local, nationwide or worldwide (online selling)?

7 Who are your main competitors?

8 How well established are they?

9 Is it an expanding or contracting market?

10 How will your product or service differ?

When you have answered these questions as far as you can, your next step is to carry out some preliminary market research.

Market research

As a small trader or partnership, you cannot afford to embark on a very large market research exercise, but it is worthwhile trying to establish whether what sells well to friends and colleagues, or business contacts, will be bought by others.

You can research the market in an informal way by asking friends, family and colleagues what they think of your idea. A more business-like approach is to send out or give out a short questionnaire. You could do this at networking meetings, online, or with gatherings of family or friends. Expect a better response if you hand out the questionnaires personally and get people to complete them then and there.

Whichever method of distribution you choose, design your questionnaire carefully, taking these guidelines into account:

• Use one A4 sheet at most, or computer equivalent.

• Ask questions which require tick-box responses – people don’t like to write long answers.

• If you ask people to rate an attribute of your product/service, give them an even number of boxes to tick – four or six. If you give them five they are likely to go down the middle.

• Leave space for additional comments.

• Don’t ask for a lot of personal information – you might be infringing the Data Protection Act.

• Make giving their name optional – people often give ‘truer’ answers if they know they are anonymous.

• Draw up a good system for analysing the responses.

Figure 1.1 is an example of a questionnaire James might send out. He is thinking of setting up a garden design and landscaping business in and around his local villages.

Figure 1.1 Example marketing questionnaire

If James gets a 90 per cent ‘no’ to Question 1, he can be pretty sure that either his local market is saturated, or he has asked the wrong people, or all his local gardens are perfect! If he has a favourable response to his first question, the other responses will give him some idea of which parts of his service potential clients will find the most valuable.

Try it now: Design your own questionnaire

Now design your own questionnaire, decide on its distribution method and devise a system (computer- or pap...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title
• Acknowledgements
• Contents 
• 1 The first step
• 2 Starting up
• 3 Your image
• 4 Marketing
• 5 Selling
• 6 E-commerce
• 7 Business and personal finance
• 8 The office
• 9 Employing others
• 10 Opening a shop
• 11 Running a home and a business
• 12 The professionals
• Answers to ‘Employing others’ quiz (Chapter 9)
• Copyright