Questions& Answers Business Planning: If you’re interested in starting your own business.
By now you probably know that writing a business plan is one of the first steps.
But what should a business plan include? How detailed should it be?
Do you need to do research first?
Don’t worry—below we’ll answer all of your questions.
And walk you through putting together your first business plan from start to finish!
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Questions & Answers Business Planning
1. What are your potential markets for your business.
Consider which segment of the local (and/or international) population will be seeking to use your products or services.
This needs to be more than mere guesswork and involves doing accurate and intelligent research.
You need to analyze secondary research collected by outside observers.
As well as getting primary research that you collect yourself, with your own methods and observations.
Consider the following areas of inquiry:
- Is there a viable market for the product or service you want to sell?
- How old are your potential customers?
- What do they do for a living?
- Is your product or service attractive to a particular ethnic or economic population?
- Will only wealthy people be able to afford it?
- Does your ideal customer live in a certain type of neighborhood or area?
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2. What are the size of your potential market.
It’s important to be as specific as possible in regard to your market and your product.
If you want to start a soap business, for example, you may believe that every dirty body needs your product.
But you can’t start with the entire world as your initial market.
Even if you’ve developed such a universally needed item as soap.
You need to identify a smaller, more targeted customer group first.
Such as children under eight who might like bubblegum scented bubble bath, or soap made for mechanics.
From there, you can analyze demographic information more specifically:
- How many car mechanics are in need of soap in any given community?
- How many children in the United States are currently under the age of eight?
- How much soap will they use in a month or a year?
- How many other soap manufacturers already have a share of the market?
- How big are your potential competitors?
Questions & Answers Business Planning
3. What are the most attractive features of your product?
You must be able to answer these questions clearly in your mind before you get face to face with customers.
Questions & Answers Business Planning
4. What specific needs of your prospective customer does your product satisfy?
5. What does your company offer that other companies do not offer?
Questions & Answers Business Planning
6. Who exactly is your customer?
7. Who buys your product or service right now?
Questions & Answers Business Planning
8. Who will be your future customers?
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Questions & Answers Business Planning
9. What are the trends in your business and in your market?
10. What new market might be there before your product or service?
Questions & Answers Business Planning
11. Why does your customers buy? what advantages or benefits does your prospect perceived in purchasing your product or service ?
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12. Who or what is your competitors?
Questions & Answers Business Planning
13. What is your competitive advantage?
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14. Who are your non customers?
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Questions & Answers Business Planning
15. When do your customers buy?
What season of the year do your customers buy the most. During what stage of the business cycle do they buy? some products are most suitable for start-up business. Others are better suited for growing business. And some work best for large companies that have stabilized or leveled off in the market.
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Questions & Answers Business Planning
16. What has to happen before your prospect will buy your product?
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17. What are your financial data.
How will you convince others to invest in your endeavor? By having clear, transparent and realistic financial information that shows you know what you’re talking about and that you’re not hiding anything.
- The accuracy of your financial figures and projections is absolutely critical in convincing investors, loan sources, and partners that your business concept is worthy of support. The data must also be scrupulously honest and extremely clear.
- Since banks and many other funding sources will compare your projections to industry averages in the R.M.A data, in the United States you can use the R.M.A figures to test your projections before the bank does.
Here are some questions to ask the hesitant prospect , what would have to happen before you went ahead with this offer?, what would you have to be convinced of to buy this product or services? The answers you get will often give you the key to the business.