Developing your small home business ideas by ericwelke

Articles from EricWelke.com Developing Your Small Home Business Ideas by Eric Welke

Think for a moment and ask yourself. What is your livelihood? What are the duties and responsibilities required by your livelihood? What is needed for you to grow your livelihood? You can of course answer the first two questions easily as your job is quite familiar to you. When it comes to the third question, you probably have a plan or list of steps in your head that you believe will help you further your career. The last question encapsulates in a nutshell what business development is all about. Developing small home business ideas require research, planning and experimenting. Business may grow organically due to a steady demand for its services, but only a small percentage of them are lucky enough to experience this. A business development plan is a critical component of your overall start-up business plan. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s good to have one ready even if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re still in the incubation period. No plan survives first contact, so be prepared to fine tune your development plan when you have some data from operations. Typically, small home business ideas transform into one man operations. These start-ups are the seeds of larger enterprises and a business development plan lays out the road ahead. It is generally focused on the following: expanding markets share, maintaining existing customers and laying the foundation for further growth.

Expanding Market Share Any development plan must include strategies on how to expand the market share. It’s ok to start with friends and neighbors, but you need more than that to grow your business. There are some very basic strategies that should be included in any effort to developing small home business ideas. If you have an existing team, you should conduct regular meetings and training sessions to teach members how to market effectively. An advertising campaign will also help you gain more visibility, which in turn can be converted to customers and market share. For home-based businesses, a regular weekly ad can reap huge dividends. Depending on the nature of your small business, focusing on one-time buyers is not enough. You should focus instead on growing the number of your repeat customers. Maintaining Existing Customers Once you have regular customers, you need to ensure that they stay regular customers. Keeping them happy and satisfied with your products and services is also something you have to worry about. Customers are always looking for value in their purchases. They always want to get the best and the most for their money. Aftersales support, product warranty, and loyalty incentives are examples of features that can add value to your product. You need to be aware of your competition too. It isn’t necessary to go on a price war just to keep your customers. Always consider how much value for money you’re offering to your customers. Low prices might get some people to try your competition but will it turn them into repeat customers? Laying the Foundation for Further Growth Investing in your own business is crucial for a business of any size, even for the smallest one man operations. You have to seriously consider purchasing equipment, facilities and sourcing staff that you’ll need to maintain your company’s

growth. For a small home business, investing in the right production equipment should be prioritized. For example, if you’re business is selling baked goods online then a larger oven is a good investment. The larger size will allow you to meet increased demand and deliver on time. These qualities if maintained consistently, are huge factors in building customer loyalty. Vertical growth is growth within your primary business while horizontal growth is expansion into related lines of business. Growth in your chosen market shouldn’t be limited to vertical growth. Horizontal growth can be a powerful engine that can push your small business forward. Let’s say you’re fairly successful in selling your web design services, but the rate you’re acquiring new clients has slowed down. Should you stop marketing your web design services? Of course not, but you can offer related services that your existing customers and prospects might need. You can offer them SEO or hosting services. These offerings both complement your primary web design service.

In the long term, any business that has flat growth numbers will eventually succumb to constantly increasing operational costs. Even a one man business cannot stay at the breakeven point because inflation, rising costs and depreciation will put him in the red. The optimal growth means varies for each type of business, but it is basically a rate of growth that can sustain costs and produce the desired level of acceptable profit. Always remember that when developing your small home business ideas, long term sustainable growth trumps overnight success every time.