Congratulations! You have just built a solid business plan! Now, you are looking for what must an entrepreneur do after creating a business plan. In this 4-part series of blogs, we go through the various stages in the life of entrepreneurs to help them plan and run a successful business. This blog focuses specifically on what an entrepreneur should do after creating a solid business plan.
Part 1: 7 Things an Entrepreneur Must Assume When Starting a Business
Part 2: Created a New Business Plan? Do This Next!
Part 3: New Entrepreneurs Must Master These 4 Skills
Part 4: 7 Ways for Entrepreneurs to Decrease Risk on Payments
Step 1: Test the Waters
The plan sounds solid in your head. Your business partners love it too. Now, it is time for you to put that plan into action and mint some money, right? Not really. It is essential that your potential customers love the product too. How do you ensure that your customers love it before launching the business? You do it by conducting focus group tests. Good initial testing will help you identify potential loopholes in your offer and refine it according to your customers’ requirements. NEVER skip this stage.
Step 2: Get Professional Advice
Sometimes the customers do not precisely know what they want before it is offered to them. Especially if you plan on entering the market with a unique and innovative offer. Getting advice from investors and professionals can help you further refine your offer before stepping into the market.
Step 3: Complete Necessary Paperwork
Once you have done your research and spoken to the experts, it is time to start the actual grunt work. To ensure that you can do business in the United States, you need to file a few forms and register your business with the government. Some important documents that you need to file:
Depending on the type of operation you are running (Business Corporation or Limited Liability Company (LLC)), you need to file different documents.
Apart from this, you also need to set up a merchant account since you cannot carry out all the business-related transactions through your personal account in the long term. You can always contact a reliable Nacha-preferred payment processor if you need help setting up ACH and credit card processing methods for your business. The best payment processors can help you leverage these payment technologies with solutions like SMS payments, Email invoicing, IVR payments, Hosted payment pages, and more.
Step 4: Manage and Organize Seed Finances
After registering your business successfully, you are ready to hire your first people. However, to do so, you need money. If you are bootstrapping, you do not need external funds, but if you want to create a scalable operation from day one, you must involve an investor. Having an investor on board will help you ensure that you do not go broke trying to grow your business first-hand.
Step 5: Find the Right Talent
An entrepreneur is a person who not only does something brave by starting a new business but also provides employment opportunities for several other people! Hiring people is a super-exciting part of being a business owner. If you start small, you need not employ someone full-time and rely on freelancers or contractors instead.
Step 6: Adopt the Technology Start the Operations
You’ve hired the right people, but that is not enough. You also need to complement their skills with awesome tech. You can find some of the best business management software online. With your super team armed and ready, you are now ready to go full-steam ahead!
Step 7: Focus on Promotions and Marketing
You’d think that starting a business is enough, but the battle is only half won. To convert your business idea into a reality, you need to start turning in profits. You need to invest in promotions and marketing to ensure that your products and services reach your potential customers. With a refined marketing strategy, you can leverage social media to promote your business with minimal upfront investment.
Step 8: Manage Cashflow and Returns
Once you start getting the first payments, it is time to organize and manage your cash flow. Keep your investors looped in for any help you need to manage the funds. Sync all your payment data from the virtual terminal to accounting tools like QuickBooks using developer plugins.
Step 9: Build a Reliable Brand Image
Congratulations! You have built a business, and it has started generating results. Now, you don’t want to limit yourself, do you? Ideally, you want word of mouth to take over your marketing efforts, generating inbound leads. To do so, you need to invest your time in building a reliable brand image for your business.
Step 10: Find Opportunities for Growth
Brands that stop innovating and pushing the boundaries die before reaching their final form. To ensure that you stay in business for a long time, you must keep innovating and finding new growth opportunities.
Creating a business plan is a small step in the right direction. However, you need to toil a little harder to reach your goals. Schedule a call with our team for your business’s payment processing needs!
Date originally published: January 22, 2022