Tips For Starting And Running An SME. Part 2

A few days ago, we took the first part of the points to note when starting and running an SME (Small and Medium-sized Business/Enterprise). We established the fact that the first step is creativity and analytical thinking. Obviously, you need to have a plan before you can move towards it's execution. However, in planning, it should not be tailored towards what you feel but what the customers and potential customers will need - after all, they are the principal reason for going into business in the first place.

Asides having a working plan in place, you would need maximum focus and commitment to always giving it your best shot (as we saw from the last post). Here, we will look at a few more tips to give you an edge when starting an SME or effectively running an existing one.

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1. Your marketing prowess

A business owner may be offering an excellent service that people may be interested in but if they don't know about it, they will not patronize the business - that's just the simple truth. As much as you are committed to offering and improving your services, you should also let people know about your business. Awesomely enough, in this era, we have many advertising platforms in our disposition, like social media (Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp et al). Exposing your business for the community to see will boost your customer-base.

I remember an experience a friend shared with me a few weeks back. She needed a particular job to be done and she didn't know that a friend of her's just started offering the same service. After a while of searching, she finally outsourced the job only for her to know after some days that her friend also does the same thing. You see, if she had known, she would patronized him. The truth is, your business may be very good but you still need to package it for others to see.

You should also realize that customers themselves are very potent marketing agents. A customer you satisfy beyond their imagination will definitely recommend you to others and that is how business grows. So a business owner should also be keen to provide excellent services to the best of their ability. Always try to take feedbacks from customers to know where and how to improve on products and services.

2. Willingness to make sacrifices

Starting a business is usually the most demanding part of running a business. The reason is very simple; just like in physics "you will need a substantial amount of force to cause an object to move, otherwise it will remain in its place of dormancy or rest". The same thing happens when starting up a business. There are obvious sacrifices you will need to make. Firstly, your time will be heavily invested for it to succeed. Then of course, your resources and even your energy.

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Some of the big cooperations you see now also had similar story at the start. The CEO of a particular tech and manufacturing giant in this part of the world was asked in an interview about the success of his company and he made a very short response "work and hard work". He put in so much work at the start that his work is now speaking for itself.

When stating a business, you should be aware that you will meet competitors. At a point, you will need to study your closest competitors to know what they are doing and you can also work to improve on that and make your own outstanding. In business, there is no shame in doing what is gainful. Finally, business owners should understand that "gain" only comes after work and not before that.

Thanks for reading