Launching and the first year. Business support for success

Launching and the first year

The first steps to success

The time has come to tell the world about your new venture ...

You've done your research and prepared thoroughly. You've set up your business, checked it's compliant with the law and regulations. Employed staff, bought stock and set up your business premises. Now you're ready to launch your new business venture and see all your plans come to fruition.

Even with the best preparation in the world, things won't always go to plan. It's impossible to foresee every scenario. Sometimes the bumps in the road will challenge you but with the planning and hard work you've done, you'll be able to see a way ahead. At other times, you could meet an unexpected fork in the road. You'll be unsure which way to go. That's why you need the support of experienced, professional business advisors like Wood and Disney by your side.

Wood and Disney help many businesses and ambitious entrepreneurs just like you, with launching their business and the first year. We will listen to your problems, talk through your ideas, help you make the right decisions. Some business owners want the reassurance of a full arrangement with us where we do their bookkeeping, accounts, VAT, payroll and compliance work from day 1, leaving them free to focus on their business. For other start ups, where keeping costs as low as possible is key, we arrange meetings and offer advice as required and our relationship and the services we provide evolve as their business becomes established and can afford and require more professional assistance. Others fall in between. Wood and Disney can tailor our services to meet your needs and budget as your business evolves.

Your first year needs to focus on building a solid foundation to your business, to give it resilience to move forward and grow, into the future.

Marketing and generating sales

Branding

Your brand tells your customers what they can expect from your products and services; it differentiates you from your competitors. Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who your target customers want and need you to be. For example, are you the innovative maverick in your industry or the experienced, reliable one? You need to deliver on the expectations raised. For example if you have a brand that creates a perception of your business as delivering a high-end, high-cost, high-quality product, then your products and your customer experience must meet and preferably exceed the expectations of your customers or they will soon lose faith in your company and take their business to your competitors.

Your brand needs to communicate the benefits and features of your products or services and the qualities you want your customers to associate with your business. You need a brand that is consistent across your logo, website, packaging and promotional materials. It extends to every aspect of your business: how you answer your phones, what you or your salespeople wear on sales calls ...

Choosing the marketing channels to focus on

There are numerous marketing channels that you could use to reach your customers: email, direct mail, web ads, social media, broadcast media, printed media, flyers, event or team sponsorship, point of sale, affiliates .... Any of these can be effective but you need to narrow down your choice to the best value channel that generates the most sales per £ marketing spent. The important questions you need to ask yourself are: who are your target customers and where do they "hang out"?

For example, if you are launching a new range of organic, eco hair products your target market might be young professional women, in the 25 to 40 age bracket. The channel you choose will be very different to a business launching specialised machining tools into the light engineering sector. For the former, a social media campaign focusing on Facebook which allows you to accurately focus advertising at your target market and an active twitter campaign particularly focusing on fashion influencers might be the best choice. For the latter, advertising in trade press, direct mail, sales visits and attendance at trade shows would be a better approach.

Focus on the cost of the channel (particularly if you have a very low marketing budget), how long will it take to get results and how much time does the channel require. Don't be disheartened, it will take a while to build a following and generate leads and sales. But equally, if the channel is not delivering results, don't be afraid to move to a different platform or try something new.

Converting leads to sales

Leads frequently do not translate into sales. It requires nurturing and encouragement to persuade potential customers who you've successfully caught the attention of, to cross the line and make a purchase. How do you increase your lead conversion rate?

Trust: People need to believe that your product or service delivers what you claim. They need to trust your company to back-up their purchase with good customer care and follow-up. One of the best and easiest ways to build trust is through reviews, and testimonials from customers through email, on Yelp, Facebook, or any other relevant review site. For those “special” reviews, showcase them on your website. Do not worry about getting one or two negative reviews as this might work to your advantage as they show transparency, giving leads more confidence that your reviews are reputable. If people see that others are buying your products and enjoying them, they can be persuaded to follow suit.

Money: If your price doesn’t match the perceived value of your products or services, you are likely to miss out on sales.

Time: If the customers feel that the time is not right, they are not likely to purchase. Customers can be encouraged to complete on a purchase by follow up using email, phone calls or site visits, or by offering incentives to purchase such as limited time offers.

Building a reliable brand will ultimately make it easier for you to market your product or services.

Keeping customers happy

Generating a customer base is hard work and provides the foundation of revenue from which your business can grow. It is vital that you keep your customers happy so that they return to buy again from you and sing your praises to encourage others to become customers by referral. There are many ways of achieving happy satisfied customers many of which are very simple:

Make your customers feel important and treat them as individuals.
Know your products and services.
Understand the cost of losing one customer; you don’t just lose one sale, you miss out on a lifetime opportunity of profitability with that customer. Thank your customers every chance you get, never take them for granted and reward loyalty.
Ask your customers what they want and how you can do better. Make it easy for your customers to feedback positive and negative experiences - listen and act.
Keep your promises to your customers.

Wood and Disney have a lot of experience of marketing our own and helping our clients, ambitious entrepreneurs just like you, market their businesses. We can provide you with advice and resources but we do not pretend to be experts in all aspects of branding, marketing and PR. We have contacts with many professionals whom we have used, referred clients to and trust, who specialise in branding, on-line marketing, social marketing, PR, creative industries, SEO ... We would be very happy to put you in touch with the right people to help your business off to a running start to launching and the first year.

Controlling your business

Planning gives you predictability ~ it gives you choices.

Control makes those choices become reality ~ it gives you stability.

It is very easy when you start up in business to become so focused on sales that you neglect the control systems that must be in place and run parallel to sales generation. You need to have the control and monitoring systems in place so that, for example, if you have the opportunity for a large order that you can finance purchasing the stock to make and deliver that order, that your cash flow is sufficient to pay your wages until the invoices are settled. You need up to date financial figures to hand. You need accurate cash flow forecasts. You need credit control systems. You need to measure your performance against goals and targets. Wood and Disney will make sure that you have those control systems in place and that you know and understand how to use them and leverage the technology and systems to build a strong business on launching and the first year. Wood and Disney identify your key performance indicators for each area of your business and check that you are getting real time, accurate and reliable data. We make sure you have the right systems to monitor:

Budgets and cash flow forecasting ~ Is your cash being collected quick enough? Are you comparing your actual costs to your budgets. Have you set budgets at all?
Finance ~ Real time bookkeeping, key performance indicators, management accounts. Are you making a high enough profit margin? Are you making sure you are taking into account all liabilities including potential tax liabilities.
Key areas of your business, including customer service metrics, clearly defined sales and marketing targets, benchmarking of performance.

Wood and Disney guide you to identify the technology that will help you to achieve these goals including CRM, performance measurement technology, cloud financials and apps. Leveraging technology is currently where the most successful businesses are spending their money.

Growing your business

To sustainably grow, first you must make the most of the business you already have, then move forward, expand your business and fund that growth.

Could you do more to crank up the profits and cash flow of the business you already have? You already have a customer base so the first thing to look at is increasing how much and how often your existing customers spend money with you. Wood and Disney look at your product/pricing mix to maximise profits. Are you making the most of your assets, both business and personal or can we improve their performance? We identify future growth and expansion opportunities and find the funds to finance your growth.

Wood and Disney use the toolkits and resources we have developed in our structured business advisory system, Your Journey to Freedom, to breakdown and analyse your existing accounts using a series of tools that we have developed to identify areas of potential improved profit and cash flow. We take you through a series of “What If?” scenarios using your figures to show you the impact on profit and cash flow of changing pricing, costs, overheads, supply chain… We model the scenarios using your real time data and your business environment to help you understand and give you confidence in the decisions you make.

Then Wood and Disney turn to the future and using business growth toolkits we look at expanding your business. What are the future growth opportunities in your current business? How are you going to fund your growth?