Your Guide To Starting Up A New Business - Everything From Business Plans To Call Tracking

They say there is no luck in business, and although this is a bit of a stretch, I think there is some truth in this. I have set up businesses that have gone bust and I have run very successful businesses and although it would be easier to blame bad luck, I know if I had made some better decisions along the way they would have succeeded. It is also said in business that most successful entrepreneurs have had previous failures in the past. If you are the kind of person that doesn't just blame bad luck but analyses what went wrong and learns from it, it puts in you in a strong position for the next venture. Obviously it would be better not to make mistakes in the first place and hence my guide on what to do to succeed in setting up a new business.

1. Create a business plan. Depending on what you need it for will depend on what form it takes. If you are looking for a bank loan or investing a moderate to large amount of your own money then you need to do this formally and thoroughly. The key two features of this are the market research, and the cash flow forecast. Especially if you are investing your own money it is is vitally important to be realistic. I would recommend making a conservative best guess of what you might achieve and then half it. My first business had a carefully constructed business plan but we were overly ambitious on what share of the market we could take.

2. Get the balance right between minimising costs and being overly thrifty. Now this one is difficult and experience certainly helps with this. With my first business I got my priorities wrong and tried to do a shop fit myself. Consequently I got behind with other things and it also didn't look that good and it cost me a lot more in the long run.

3. Get your financial systems right from the start. Now it doesn't need to be fancy, but you need a robust way of recording your sales and purchase invoices and for cross referencing with your bank account. You could even do this on excel or paper as long as it is always kept up to date every day but you probably want to buy an accounting package. Remember you need to keep all your purchase invoices organised and ready for inspection for 7 years for tax and VAT purposes.

4. Don't waste money on ineffective advertising. You need to know what advertising is working and only spend money on that. The best way to keep tabs on all enquiries you receive via telephone is to use call tracking. Call tracking works by allocating a unique telephone number to each advertising campaign and then you can view all the calls you have received for each advert in an online control panel that even has a recording of each call.

I could write pages of information but I think these are the most important things. Do an appropriate business plan, be realistic, get your financial systems right and use call tracking to keep tabs on your advertising budget.