Five Ideas that Kill Home Businesses
There are lots of ways to get off to a bad start with your home
business. As a Home Business Consultant and Coach I've heard the
five listed below most often. Starting off with any of these
common misconceptions can cause you a lot of grief as your home
business starts to grow.
1. With work from home businesses like mine, having the
lowest price is the best way to enter the market and get
customers.
I can't think of a idea that is more widespread among the owners
of new work from home businesses. Starting out at a lower than
market price might get you some early attention, but it does
nothing to improve your chances of success in the long term -
and you are in this for the long term, right?
The truth is, you get the customers/clients you court. If you
focus on people who are looking for bargains, or who are very
price sensitive, those are the people you are going to have as
your customers. When you try to move to market price at a later
date, most of them are not going to move with you. Instead,
they'll be looking for the newest low-price kid on the block.
If you want happy, loyal customers at the market price, or even
at a premium to the market, have the confidence to price
yourself there on the first day you are open for business. If
you just can't bring yourself to face your competition without
lower prices, offer an introductory special that is clearly
indicated as a temporary mark down from your regular prices.
Once the time period for your intoductory, or grand opening
special has passed put your prices back where they belong.
2. My product/service will sell itself.
Have you ever heard of Coca Cola? How about McDonald's? Is there
likely a person alive in the industrialized world who hasn't
been exposed to the product of these two giants? If any product
could sell itself, it should be likely that products with the
reputation, recognition, and market acceptance of those offered
by Coke and McDonald's would fit the bill. Yet, both Coca Cola
and McDonald's market extensively.
Coca Cola, alone, spends over $1.5 billion US dollars every year
to sell their product, and it's safe to asssume McDononald's has
a similar budget.
Now why do the people in charge of these two highly successful
businesses waste all that money on marketing? Because no product
sells itself. Work from home businesses are no different. You
need a marketing plan and a sales effort if you want to succeed.
3. My business is too small to need a business plan.
D-Day was the largest coordinated military action to take place
in the history of the world. Within one month of the original
landing (in which 4,000 ships participated) 1 million men, over
150,000 vehicles and 1/2 million tons of supplies had entered
europe. When they asked General Eisenhower how important the
invasion plan had been to his success he said, that the plan was
unimportant. No military plan survives the first five seconds of
contact with the enemy. But the planning process, was invaluable.
OK, you are a little home business, not the D-Day invasion. Why
waste time on a plan? Because the planning process will be
invaluable for you as well. You will learn things you didn't
know, see things you hadn't seen, and realize things you thought
were true for your business are just plain inaccurate.
It's the process of investigating the plan, and setting your
goals down in black and white that matters. You can throw the
thing away once its done if you have the heart, but don't miss
building it from the ground up. Its a foundation stone of your
future success.
4. I'm going to use word of mouth to market my business
Sorry... can't be done. Word-of-mouth is the result of excellent
marketing, combined with an excellent product, or service,
delivered with excellence. It can't be your marketing plan -
because it is the result of your marketing plan plus your
product, or service.
It's true that word of mouth advertising is probably the most
effective advertising work from home businesses can get over
time. The problem is, the only way you can get it is to; FIRST,
market your business well so you have some customers (if you
don't have customers who is going to spread the word?), and
SECOND, impress those customers with your quality product, or
service.
If you market well, and provide excellent customer service
you'll build the positive word of mouth you deserve.
5. My friend/girlfriend/son is building my website for
free.
I've heard 100 people say this and 90 of them are still waiting
for their friend, girlfriend (fill in the blank) to finish.
Eight of them had to pay a web design professional more to fix
the mess they received than it would have cost to hire them in
the first. A couple, of course, did get a good website, but the
odds were never good.
The best way to approach your website, by far, is to put in the
time and effort to learn this skill yourself. With the tools
available these days anyone can do it. Some products are so
"turnkey" they include Keyword Analysis and Search Engine
Optimization - essentials in driving traffic to your site.
Even if you went the full route and bought a top of the line
WYSIWYG editor like Microsoft's FrontPage, or Macro Media's
DreamWeaver, and then took a few classes to learn how to use it,
you expense would likely be under $1,000 - about the price of a
competent web designer's time for a basic site. If all you are
looking for is a basic brochure site, many ISP's offer quite
adequate editors as part of their hosting package. You can also
buy templates for around $50 USD that can be modified to fit
your business needs.
If you just can't face the learning curve required to build it
yourself, and you don't want to mess with modifying templates,
the world is full of web designers that will build you an
excellent, professional site at a price that is about the same
as printing a thousand full color brochures.
There you have it. The five most commonly held misconceptions of
new home business owner's. If you recognize one of them lurking
in your thinking get rid of it now. You'll save yourself
headaches and speed up your journey to success.
About the author:
Jess Huffman is a Business Consultant and Coach working from his
home office in Calgary, Alberta. Jess specializies in home based
busineses and has helped hundreds of clients start their own
work from home businesses.
http://www.home-business-and-entrepreneur-tools.com
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