Creating a business entity is easy, there are many resources for choosing the entity type, becoming licensed and insured. This article covers how to actually get the business going with sales, marketing, financial management, and operations.
I have built 5 businesses in the last 20 years and AssetLab Marketing is the most recent, launching in 2014. This article mixes best practices and my personal experience as a multi-business owner.
Before going any further, you need to know what, specifically, it is you intend to sell and who, specifically, you want to sell to. If you’re not yet sure or haven’t decided, those are the first two steps. From there, we can create a business.
How To Setup Sales And Marketing
If you can find customers you can buy time to get everything else going, so this is the most important area to invest in early. Small businesses need:
- A great, simple website tailored to what is being sold and who it’s being sold to
- An email address at your domain name and phone number
- Social media profiles on Facebook and LinkedIn
- Business directory listings on Google, Yelp, and Facebook
- A network marketing solution (BNI, Biz2Biz, or Chamber of Commerce)
- And, some basic sales training
Of these, sales training is the most often skipped step and websites are where new business owners waste far too much of their their own time.
Whether the business is manufacturing/product based (i.e. food, backpacks, grass catchers), service based (i.e. lawyers, CPAs, doctors) or experience based (events, rentals, travel), having a trusted marketing partner will help you sell more, more quickly.
Check out some more sales & marketing content:
How To Setup Small Business Operations
Operations is all about fulfilling what you sell. For a manufacturing business, it’s production. For a retail business, it’s store operations and inventory mangement. For a services business, it’s delivering what is agreed in contracts.
The key to operations is creating a system and hiring people to execute the system. As an owner, you can take on sales, operations leadership, and financial leadership until you get to a certian size.
Take the time to plan operations and get in position to execute from the first sale.
Some operations related content for you to explore:
How To Setup Financial Management
Cash flow, accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory, sales tax, state tax, bank accounts, credit cards, lines of credit, Profit and loss, balance sheet, invoice aging.
Having these financial areas of the business taken care of is very important from before the business starts.
Hiring a CPA from the start and working with that professional to build out how the financial processes of the business work is very important.
Even a small business needs financial guidance from time to time and pays taxes. Leveraging a professional makes this part of the business work from the start.
Creating a business is an adventure and will have times of great joy and times of great challenge. Leverage your team and update business systems to improve as challenges arise.
My top recommendation is to build a team around you that can support your business and journey. We can certainly be the marketing expert on your team, grab a few minutes on our calendar to find out.
