There is no denying that female founders often face an uphill battle in the business world. Not only do they receive a disproportionately small percentage of available VC funding, but they often face discrimination and sometimes even harassment. Despite this, female founders continue to thrive. In fact, according to the National Association of Women Business Owners, “one in five firms with revenue of $1 million or more is woman-owned.” Of course, to get to that level, you have to survive your first year in business. By being prepared for the opportunities and challenges that may come your way, you will be well positioned to make that first year a success. 1. Combatting ‘Proven Patterns’ Like it or not, female founders often face preconceived notions about what an entrepreneur should look like, what women are (and aren’t capable of) and even their dedication to their business idea. In a blog post, Elizabeth Yin, co-founder of LaunchBit, writes, “I’ve been to startup events where it’s been all men and me. And, people will think I’m the caterer or the event organizer (even as I’m scarfing down the food and drinking all the beer). And, just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with being a caterer or an event planner, but it reinforces to me that these stereotypes about what entrepreneurs look like definitely exist. It’s gotten better — with more and more women starting companies, this happens less and less to me (or maybe I just go to fewer startup events now). It will change – it’s a work in progress.” Yin recommends female founders call people out when they encounter stereotypical thinking, while also being mentally prepared for outdated thinking at pitch sessions, conferences and other business events. 2. Building Confidence As a female founder, you’ll face a lot of doubters. But the last place you want doubts to be coming from is yourself. Unfortunately, self-doubt and a lack of self-confidence can negatively affect your thinking — and ultimately keep you from reaching your full potential as a founder. In an interview, Alison Gutterman, CEO and president of Jelmar, said that joining entrepreneur groups specifically for women went a long way in helping her “learn to build my confidence and overcome my negative self-talk. These groups have provided me mentors and peers to inspire me, hit me with reality checks on my capabilities and successes, and help me grow and learn from their outside perspectives and experiences.” 3. Connecting With Your Target Audience Your first year in business isn’t going to be all hardships, though. Ashley Sarnowski, co-founder of Sunnie Hunnies, said, “Our first year in business was so exciting, because we got to see our audience and brand grow as we connected with like-minded customers who were interested in our products. I think a big part of that came from being true to ourselves and letting our personalities shine through on the website, in social media and elsewhere. Attaching our faces to the brand creates a personal touch and level of connection that we wouldn’t get otherwise.” Studies have found that women are more empathetic than men, and this is something female founders can use to their advantage. When marketing your new product or service, it becomes easier to make an emotional appeal because you can better understand (and relate to) your audience’s pain points. Helping your target audience feel understood should be a key part of your year one plans. A powerful emotional connection will result in loyal customers who stick with you through thick and thin. 4. Learning And Growing If there’s one thing you can expect during your first year in business as a female founder, it’s a lot of learning and personal growth. You learn so much more through actually running your own business than you ever would after reading 100 articles about it. Your first year is guaranteed to have constant ups and downs. You’ll undoubtedly face rejection and make mistakes. At the same time, you’ll find victories as you make sales and satisfy your customers. The most important thing is to not give up when failures and setbacks come — and not to get overly confident when you succeed, either. Take a step back so you can look at the lessons that can be pulled from everything you experience during your first year in business. Identifying and applying these lessons in the future will put you on track for even greater success in the future. Taking Year One In Stride The first year in business for a female founder is full of challenges — but it also provides amazing opportunities to dig deep and come to understand what your strengths truly are. As you give your best effort and use the business acumen that you’ve already developed, you can lay a solid foundation for your new company, despite any obstacles that might try to throw you off course. Business can be hard, but so are many other things that you’ve already conquered in your life. You can do this. Source: https://www.forbes.com Image Credit: Getty
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Recent global issues, from pandemics to war, have only stressed the need for small businesses to take advantage of the fact they can obtain a great deal of agility in the digital realm. Right now, it is easier than ever to use technology to diversify revenue streams and open up new products to your market if you know where to look and how to accomplish such tasks. However, while many entrepreneurs inherently understand the technology and the changes taking place, I regularly work with owners who are struggling to come to grips with precisely what trends and changes they are supposed to be paying attention to. Should a company buy into the remote work trend? Are they ready to adopt cloud-based solutions? Do they need to move to an e-commerce platform completely? These are not small questions, especially for small business owners who have already dealt with many shocks in recent years. For many, failing to get these initiatives right after a significant investment could be devastating. To help with this issue, I wanted to give my thoughts and insights gained from working with several small businesses during their successful expansions into and across the digital space. So where should a small business start to keep risks low? Like any action, you want it to be directed and purposeful. These are some of the primary goals for any expansion you make. Diversify And Enhance Revenue This may seem obvious, but very often, companies will fail to use their new tools to attract new customers. You will need to take the time to understand the mechanisms at your disposal and the many opportunities you have in today's interconnected world. For example, traditional paradigms around advertising and monetization are changing rapidly, and understanding these waves of change allows you to ride them into success rather than be left behind. Many companies have effectively moved into direct-to-consumer or direct-to-audience-based revenue platforms. Independent comic book creators are making millions crowdfunding their books, while periodicals like the New York Times have been able to move their classic physical offerings into a much more versatile and, in many ways more successful, digital format. Easier communication is also a key tool. Being able to instantly communicate with anyone on the globe can be easily taken advantage of for minimal cost. A digital offering allows you to reach a world of customers, and while it is not always an easy process, global expansion is an excellent way to future-proof your revenue streams against localized issues. No matter how you end up accomplishing it, the main goal for any move should be to open new streams of revenue from new customers in new areas. Adapt Customer Experiences To Modern Expectations Technology is moving faster than ever, and it is becoming a full-time job to stay abreast of the latest trends and changes. Regardless, you should ensure all your digital content, from your website to social media and blogs, revolve around usability, clarity and simplicity. Make sure your UI is easy to use and employs modern best practices. Take advantage of easy payment options like "one-click" systems where applicable, and make the customer journey as seamless and intuitive as possible. A move to the digital space is an opportunity to reevaluate the entire customer journey. Begin The Move To A Digital Work Environment In many ways, the digital revolution is happening behind the scenes of business as much as with the customer experience. Companies can begin to make a move to a more digital-friendly work environment with only a few actions. Over time these minor changes will allow you to more easily adapt your business style to employee and customer expectations in the future. • Digitize your document creations and storage methods. This allows for better accountability, searchability and record keeping. By automating your document process, you can also reduce the workload and remove the possibility of human error. • Offer some remote work options. Either allow applicable employees to accomplish some work from home or look to hire some freelancers for your next tasks. Pay attention to the communication methods, software used, project management tactics and overall results when you do this. It may take time, but you will one day need to use these lessons when workers continue to demand remote work options. Lay the groundwork and gain experience in this realm now. • Move certain aspects of staff training and collaboration to a company-controlled digital workspace. This will allow you to interact with employees in the digital space and provide you with the necessary experience generating company content. Final Thoughts Each of these steps will give you a firm basis to expand upon. By making an effective digital transformation over time, you can begin to enhance your business's efficiency, output and overall agility. The sooner you start, the easier the process will be. Hopefully, this has helped some small business owners out there see that the move toward a digital workforce and digital offerings can be made in small steps and, when done with clear strategic goals in mind, does not have to entail significant risk. The only challenge is the will to change and adapt to a new way of doing things. Source: Forbes.com Image: Getty
Sales challenges are unavoidable in any business, regardless of industry. From curating an effective sales process to pinpointing your ideal customer, solving these sales challenges is crucial during the early stages of your company. As business leaders themselves, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council have faced their fair share of sales obstacles when starting their companies. Below, nine members discuss challenges new businesses often face in selling their product or service and how they can work to overcome those difficulties. 1. Identifying Why People Buy The biggest obstacle most companies face early on is truly identifying why people buy. We create businesses and products because of a passion or a skill set or a gap in the market, but forget to truly understand why someone would buy it. People buy based on emotion and justify with logic. You have to be able to tie your product or service into the emotional connection. It doesn't matter who your ideal client is—it's emotional. - Ryann Dowdy, Uncensored Consulting, LLC 2. Misunderstanding Your Numbers Many new entrepreneurs focus too hard on their sales funnels, marketing campaigns and branding while paying little attention to their finances. Knowing your numbers is half of the selling process. Understanding your margins, landed costs and customer acquisition costs is the only way to truly scale your business and succeed. Without a proper understanding of the sales numbers, you have no way of knowing which products are profitable and how much you can spend to increase your brand awareness. Most things in business come down to the numbers. You should eat, sleep and breathe your sales numbers. Spend the time learning about basic margins and profitability ratios. This will help you make better decisions on purchasing, pricing and selling your products. - Shaun Conrad, My Online Accounting Course 3. Differentiating Your Sales Pitch A big obstacle new companies face is how to differentiate their sales pitch. When you already have a well-established brand, the product sells itself. However, as a newer entrant into the market, you have to invest the time in sales collateral and sales enablement tools to make it easier to break down any buyer reservations and generate more sales. When you have prospects who are unfamiliar with your business, you have to work harder to supply them with the assets and confidence they need to choose you over more-established competitors. - Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep Mattress 4. Attracting The Right Clients You want to grow your business and close sales, but you aren't confident enough to refuse work that isn't aligned with your core service offering. As a result, you do work you don't want to do and serve people who might not be a good fit. My advice is to know your target client and start getting comfortable saying "no." See how saying "no" creates bandwidth for you to gain right-fit clients. If you do feel desperate and accept work that isn't a strong fit, you need to acknowledge that you are making a compromise. Try not to let it change the course you are paving for your new business. - Trivinia Barber, PriorityVA 5. Managing Processes Early-stage businesses need to have clearly defined processes, signature services and a thorough understanding of how their budget is bringing in leads. Additionally, knowing how they measure and define success is key. Define processes and have a clear understanding of what your company does and how it does it. Once you have that, some tools can help manage those processes, such as Asana or ClickUp for remote teams. It's also important to get buy-in from employees on the new tools and processes. They need to understand why the changes are happening and how these will benefit their work and productivity. After all, they're the ones who will be implementing the new processes. Finally, it's crucial to be patient. Implementing new processes takes time and won't happen overnight. - Tonika Bruce, Lead Nicely, Inc. 6. Growing Profitable Email Lists Many new business owners struggle with growing their email lists. If you're in this position, don't worry. There are quite a few ways you can overcome this issue. I suggest creating a lead magnet, which is an exclusive piece of content or promotion. In order to take advantage of this deal, visitors will need to subscribe to your email list. The key to making this strategy work is to make sure the content or offer is something your audience actually wants. I create content for our readers based on their unique goals and pain points. I also include promotions for specific products on targeted landing pages. If you follow this advice, you'll slowly begin to see your email list grow. - John Brackett, Smash Balloon LLC 7. Creating The Perfect Offer Creating the right type of offer plays a pivotal role in how well you sell, and crafting your offering so that it compels people to buy is very challenging. Many new business owners just slap a price tag on a product and hope that people will buy. However, you need to learn how to bundle your product with other things. Doing so will have your audience believing that they're getting an amazing offer at a great value. You could bundle your product with a guarantee, free tutorials, free upgrades, servicing and more. Spend time learning to bundle a solid offer and then test it out. Doing so will ensure that you create the best chance of driving great sales from the start. - Blair Williams, MemberPress 8. Gaining Consumer Trust Gaining trust is definitely one of the greatest obstacles during the early stages. At the end of the day, you don’t have a track record you can refer to, often both individually as well as with your product. B2B founders especially have to persuade risk-averse business managers that they deserve to be tried. There is no magic sauce beyond two timeless pieces of advice: Work harder than anyone else, and never lose your humanity. People always buy from people, and no matter how good your solution is, you need to be able to build personal relationships and gain the trust of your counterpart. Act with integrity, be true to your word and don’t make any promises you can’t keep. - Brian Pallas, Opportunity Network 9. Agreeing On The Budget Getting an agreement on the budget was a tough obstacle to overcome when our agency was in the early stages. Nothing can derail a deal faster than a mismatch between expectations and reality when it comes to budgets. Most of the time, prospects were reluctant to share their budgets, and most of them simply did not know them, as they are asked to collect quotes from several providers in order to identify how much their company will be willing to spend. What I found the most helpful was educating people on how to evaluate creative services (our area of expertise) as a whole and being transparent with them about our place within the rate ranges. When starting out, knowing your worth and being transparent and logical about price formation is key during these conversations. - Daria Gonzalez, Wunderdogs Source: Forbes.com Image Credit: Photo by fauxels from Pexels.com
In 1970 Tom Golisano spotted an under-served market in the payroll processing industry. At the time, most companies in the space believed there was no value in serving small companies of one to fifty people. So Golisano invested $3,000 cash, maxed out his credit card, and started Paychex to provide payroll services to small businesses overlooked by larger competitors. Today one of every twelve private-sector employees in America receives their paychecks from the company Golisano started. Although it took years for his startup to take off—Golisano didn’t pay himself for the first six years—Paychex is now valued at $47 billion. I recently spoke to Golisano via Zoom about his new book, The Italian Kid Did It, a memoir of growing up as the son of immigrants in Rochester, New York. The book is part autobiography and part self-help for anyone with a business idea. “When you size up a business, you need to have faith in the jockey,” says Golisano. “It doesn’t matter how fast the horse can run if the jockey has no idea how to ride it to victory.” Golisano says he looks for the following qualities in entrepreneurs: industry knowledge, passion, dedication, a strong work ethic, and the ability to identify a significant market opportunity. But there’s one attribute that Golisano says is most important: The entrepreneur must be able to sell what they produce. “Sales ability is very, very important,” says Golisano. “Many entrepreneurs fall into this trap: they say they have a cash flow problem, but really what they have is a sales problem.” Golisano tells aspiring entrepreneurs that just because they hang up a shingle, it doesn’t mean the world will beat a path to their door. “I warn them the sales process is going to be harder than they can ever imagine. And if sales are low, there will be insufficient revenues to cover operating costs.” Many entrepreneurs and business leaders who don’t have ‘sales’ in their formal titles believe selling should be left to ‘sales professionals.’ What they fail to realize is that everyone is in sales. “If you look at what people actually do all day on the job, they are selling,” sells bestselling author Dan Pink in his Masterclass on the art of persuasion. “If you’re a physician or a nurse, you are selling patients on doing something different. If you’re a boss, you are trying to influence or persuade your people to do something in a different way. If you are a teacher, you are trying to persuade your class.” Pink and his team conducted research that shows most business professionals spend about 40% of their time on something akin to sales: persuading, influencing, and convincing. The good news according to Pink and Golisano is that everyone has the ability to improve their sales skills. A great salesperson educates, simplifies, and inspires.
Don’t get hung up on titles. If you’re an entrepreneur, a small business owner, or a leader, sales skills are critical to your success. As Dan Pink says, “we’re all in sales now.” Source: Forbes.com Image Credit: Megan Rexazin from Pixabay
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