Entrepreneurship requires mental toughness and resolve. The greatest entrepreneurs thrive on problems, challenge the status quo and turn around things even in dire situations. Entrepreneurs are driven by a vision to build, create and solve problems.
Running a business is challenging. Surviving beyond five years is a rare achievement for most businesses. One of the most common causes of business failures is competition or overcrowded marketplace.
In a study conducted by CBInsights, 42% of start-ups failed due to products and services for which there was no market need. For surviving and succeeding in business, entrepreneurs need to create their own space.
Markets are crowded and competition is higher in various industries. Opening a company has become easier, however succeeding at business still remains a daunting task. How a company is able to differentiate itself from others and gets noticed decides its future.
Great businesses are built around excellent products and services. When you build a culture of high performance and excellence, customers will be attracted towards you. Here we look at the strategies entrepreneurs adopt to excel in overcrowded markets.
1. Establish a Strong Differentiator
Every business has a heart and soul. It has a spirit. What is your business, what do you stand for, why you are unique, how you can differentiate yourself from others in the space are some of the questions that need deep reflections.
Successful entrepreneurs think through things, they research and engage with customers to answer these question. They build their business and establish their core identity, which resonates with their customers as well as employees.
You cannot build a great business just by copying things from others. Businesses are built when they serve their customers, build excellent products or services and stay on top of their customer’s minds. Give them something that they will never forget about your business.
2. Offer Great Value
The only way you can be in business is by solving problems. If you don’t solve problems for people, you cannot survive in business. The most successful entrepreneurs solve problems that offer great value for customers.
When the marketplace has lot of competitors, the one that provides the most value wins. Creating a unique value proposition in your business requires identification of the customer needs. The economic value of your offerings to customers decides the value your product and services command.
When you bring value for customers, they will be happy to pay a premium for your services. Businesses cannot hide behind ordinary products and services. If there is no value, no one will use your offerings.
3. Tell a Unique Story
Every business has a unique story to tell. The successful companies are often built around great missions and vision of their founders. When your company can articulate its story and relate to the outside world in a positive way, it goes a long way in shaping your brand.
How businesses use social media, create stories that convey their deepest beliefs and shape the world reflects who they are.
Is your business telling stories in a compelling way? What is it about you and your business that will help others? Why you care to build your business? Telling stories will build a bridge between your business and the outside world. It will not just be another business selling products and services.
4. Become more Customer Centric
If you’re in a really crowded and competitive market, customers will have more options of choosing who they can deal with. In this case, it is the business that offers them great experience that oftens win them.
When customers can deal with your company in an effective and effortless manner, your business is the beneficiary. Today customers expect personalised services, extra care and attention from companies. The quality of experience and interactions will get your brand noticed.
The digital tools and technology make it easier for brands to interact with customers anytime anywhere. When customers feel valued, they stick around with your business.
5. Go With The Right Team
Today businesses need to deal with unprecedented competition and fast paced changes. The things that were valuable can suddenly become outdated. Your business needs to stay relevant and meaningful to your customers.
When you build a team with a great mix of skills and expertise, you give your business a great chance to succeed. A great team complements each others, contributes to the overall mission of the business and creates valuable progress day in day out. The teams are suitably rewarded when the business succeeds.
6. Feedback & Market:
The market never lies. It’s always correct. For any business to establish itself, it has to have paying customers. When customers pay for your products and services, they will tell you how much they value your offerings.
Many entrepreneurs start with intuition and market research data, but eventually it is the feedback from the customers that makes the difference. The market will provide you the right feedback and pointers for you to move in the right direction.
It is possible that you may not succeed with your first idea, but as long as you take the feedback and move in the right direction, you will make it.
7. Focus on Customer Success:
The only way your business will succeed is by making your customers successful. In other words, you have to do things that make your customers achieve what they want.
When your customers are delighted with your products and services, they will choose you over your competitors. When everyone in your businesses focus on your customers, your business will do very well.
Successful businesses understand and solve problems proactively. When you address customer’s pain points even before they ask them, you create value. Great entrepreneurs understand and provide solutions to the customer pain points even the unarticulated ones.
Planning, organizing and controlling are the main aspects if you want to have a successful business. One should be flexible and take time to avoid the hustle by laying down a proper strategy for your business venture.
It is rightly said, “ Success is a marathon and not a sprint.” It is important to have a futuristic approach and a desired time frame for each goal to be accomplished. Success does not come at your doorstep; you have to fight, face obstacles and learn from past mistakes in order to be successful.
Let us have a walkthrough to this article and see different ways in order to maximize your business success.
1. Maintain records :
To be successful, you have to keep the detailed records of the activities going on in business. This way you can track down the progress and know where you stand, what are your financial strengths and what potential challenges are there on your way. This will help you to face the challenges and give time in preparing the strategies to overcome the same.
2. Examine your competitor :
It is vital to keep an eye on the competitor if you want to grow and capture the market. You need to learn and get a research done on your competitors’ business so that you can incorporate some of the useful things that your business is lacking. This trick will help you in growing your business and reaching heights.
3. Analyzing the market needs :
“I do not subscribe to the theory of build it and they will come. I want to know what they want, and that’s what I’m going to build.” – JJ Virgin.
So, analyze what people want and get it ready for them; because a business expands with the support of its customers.
4. Focus on your work :
Stay focused and motivated through each phase as it is not at all easy to earn money and get success overnight. The famous proverb, “Rome was not built in a day” applies here perfectly. So, start focusing on your short-term goals to achieve long-term success. Everything takes time and patience is the key to attain everything.
5. Create online presence :
Build your online presence with the help of websites and other social media platform to get noticed. Nowadays, it is easy to create a website that has a professional look and your business needs to be in today’s era of online space.
According to a recent survey by Ipsos MediaCT and Accenture, it has been found out that around 70 percent of consumers are active on social media and purchase the product online rather than going to a store.
6. Provide a good customer service :
It is vital to provide a good support to the customer because as per the survey conducted by the American Express, 78 percent of the customers cancelled the product purchase due to poor customer service. Some did not even intend a purchase due to negative reviews and the bad after service.
So, make good customer service your priority. Examine your current service and make changes according to the need of clients. This way you can create a loyal consumer base and can also beat your competitors.
7. Implement the 80-20 rule :
The most famous 80-20 rules focuses on the efforts put to the result achieved. According to this rule, 80 percent of the result comes from 20 percent of the efforts you put. Isn’t it interesting how small efforts can lead to big results! So, focus on your efforts.
It doesn’t mean sitting for longer hours and doing nothing, but being productive and completing tasks before deadline.
8. Be consistent :
Consistency plays a major role in making money and achieving success. You have to be congruous enough in your daily work routine and keep doing what proves out to be a necessity for the business expansion. These will result in your long term habits that will help you in making a huge profit for a long run.
9. Staying healthy :
Have you ever hear of ‘Health is Wealth’? If yes, then you definitely know that how important it is to stay healthy in order to produce results. Too many entrepreneurs sacrificed their mental health, physical health and relationships with family along with friends in pursuing the business targets. Don’t be one of them!
It’s important to create a balance between both personal and professional life. Taking proper sleep, eating good food, going out with friends as well as family and engaging yourself in exercise will help you to prosper along with your business.
These are some powerful ways which will help in maximizing the success of your business. Just follow these and you might also end up being successful like the other entrepreneurs. Good Luck.
Most entrepreneurs fail. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. However, the entrepreneurs who do succeed and rise to the top inspire positive changes, create opportunities and influence things in our world.
The entrepreneurial journey stretches people beyond their comfort zones and success doesn’t come easy. The successful entrepreneurs develop amazing life hacks and practice great habits to optimise their routines. Here we look at some amazing life hacks that will make you more successful too.
1. Mediocrity or Excellence is a Choice:
Mediocrity doesn’t meet the cut. To survive as an entrepreneur, you need excellence. Entrepreneurs who succeed are excellent with execution. They set their standards high and constantly push their levels higher.
The market always rejects the mediocre, but rewards excellence. When you do something that is excellent, it attracts opportunities. But when you’re satisfied with mediocrity, you limit yourself and choose failure.
As JK Rowling says, “It is our choices … that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
2. Integrity & Reputation:
Never compromise on your integrity. A great reputation is built by what you do day in and day out. It takes years to build a great reputation and a lifetime to maintain that reputation. In a world driven by devices, it is easy to forget values and integrity. But long term success is attained with strong values, integrity and honest commitment.
Warren Buffett once shared this, “The best advice I’ve ever been given is by my father, who told me it took 20 years to build a reputation and 20 minutes to lose it.”
3. Reading:
Reading is one of the best ways to develop new insights, learn and grow. Many entrepreneurs and billionaires around the world attribute their success to reading. Whether it is Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, or Elon Musk, books have had a profound influence and changed their way of thinking.
Bill Gates thinks books are still the best way to learn new topics & shared this recently on his blog, “Although I’m lucky that I get to meet with a lot of interesting people and visit fascinating places through my work, I still think books are the best way to explore new topics that interest you.”
4. How You Spend Time Defines You
How you spend time makes you who you become. Great achievers in any field spend time learning, practising and refining what they do. World class performers spend time and that is the reason they rise to the top of their fields.
So, what separates world class performers from others? In his book, ‘Talent is Overrated,’ Geoff Colvin affirms that spending 10,000 hours in your chosen field can mould you into an expert.
5. Make Things Happen:
You have to make things happen. You can’t wait and watch, you have to take action. Entrepreneurs succeed because they build things that can capture the imagination of people, solve problems for them and create great value in the process.
While there are always people who will discourage you and put you down, eventually your efforts will make things happen. As Jeff Bezos remarked, “The common question that gets asked in business is, ‘why?’ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, why not?”
6. Success Comes With Experimentation:
Successful people work hard to attain what they achieve. Success is never served on a platter. As an entrepreneur, your focus is on doing better, taking feedback and criticism in your stride to improve yourself. The number of experimentations you make, your willingness to work hard until you can find the solution and your ability to patiently hang in there makes the difference.
As Mark Cuban says, “It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. You only have to be right once and then everyone can tell you that you are an overnight success.” Success requires persistent efforts and experimentation.
7. Execution Trumps Everything:
No one will bother how much you worked unless you created something exceptionally good. The most successful entrepreneurs understand the difference between being busy and doing meaningful work. They understand that all work is a way to create and build value for others.
Ask yourself what is the most valuable thing you can do & how you can contribute? Great execution requires competence, skills and right attitude. The Mexican billionaire, Carlos Slim summarises it very well, “Work well done is not only a responsibility to yourselves and society; it is also an emotional need.”
This video is a short summary of the key points from the book, ‘Zero to One’ by Peter Thiel. It has engaging lessons on how to build a business.
This is a fascinating video that contains 10 habits of highly effective entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is hard. Learn what makes entrepreneurs successful and separates them from the rest.
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