Do you want to know the key success factors for your startup? Then you are in the right place, we covered the most important factors for startups that can bring you success. Let’s not drag telling these we’ll straight away see the factors.
15 Key Success Factors For Startups
1. The idea
When I say Idea it reminds me a tagline of Idea company “An Idea Can Change Your Life” and yes, it is true. This is the primary factor for startups you must identify, then the rest of the factors can be built. Sometimes you may have the idea similar to others in that case other factors like timing and execution comes into the picture. For example: Take Google the idea was to make it a more interactive web search, the idea was similar to other competitors but why it succeeded? Because of the other factors not just only the idea.
2. Planning
Planning is a crucial step for any business. You have to outline what to do and how you’ll achieve it with the available resources with you, it may be finance, men, technology, etc. Planning must be done for several years in advance only then your startup can run smoothly in a flow. If your planning has some problems the whole business can collapse, it is just like a pillar to your house so give more time for planning take suggestions, and create your plan. You are now set to get into the business.
3. USP
Unique Selling Proposition is about how you position your product or service in the market. USP is the main factor for the success of any startup business, you don’t need to find a monopoly market to grow big instead, having USP itself acts as a monopoly in the market because you have the unique way of doing business from your competitors. USP is not permanent because your competitor may copy your strategy but still the advantage lies with the first mover because people get used to it.
4. Hierarchy Structure of the Business
When I say hierarchy I am talking about different levels of decision-makers, this comes under planning but this is very important so I took it as a separate point. Many businesses fail because of delays in decision making and losing the opportunities that happen usually in large companies. For startups doesn’t require more decision-makers if you’re plan was to diversify the decision to a large number of people then drop it right now! It damages your startup instead of helping. But at last, I would like to say it depends on your type of business and situation.
5. Execution
Many startups will have amazing ideas and plan but most of them fail because of a lack of proper execution. You need the right people at the right time, everyone in the startup should have the same mindset in order to achieve the same goal. When it comes to execution, not just the mindset apart from that you need Accountability, proper Allocation of resources, roles and responsibility, communication skills, and need Performance Monitoring.
6. Marketing
When it comes to marketing people are hurry to spend more without any planning, here also for marketing you need a plan whether you will use digital platforms, traditional marketing, or adopt any new marketing strategies. It all again depends on the type of business b2b or b2c based on that you need to plan the strategies. Spending more money does not bring you more sales, you need to know who are your target customers and plan how you are going to reach them. Here, the USP will attract more customers.
[Also Checkout: Five Stages of Buying Decision Process in Marketing Management ]
7. Control of Money
The title itself explains that you need to control the inflow and outflow of the money, as an entrepreneur of a startup you need to balance the income and expenses. You will start the business with great zeal that makes you spend more to grow within less time, you need to keep your mind stable all the time even when you lose something or gain something. Don’t hurry, think twice before making decisions. You need to start predicting the future income and expenditure by the present status of the business.
8. Trust and Networking
Trust builds a relationship likewise trust builds the business. In startups, you need to build trust within employees about the company, should build trust among customers by providing quality products and services, stakeholders trust must be ensured by showing the results of the business, your clients must have the trust to continue with your business, etc. You cannot force anyone to trust, it will come by your business moves. Here Networking helps to build trust and it is very crucial. I remember a marketing quote “Your network is your net worth” the good network will build trust and also increase your business.
9. Leveraging Opportunities
When you have good networking definitely you’ll have more opportunities, you need to plan how you can leverage it. It may be some business collaborations or supplementary business opportunities to your current business you need to grab the opportunity when you feel you need to do something about it. Also, you need to see whether you have sufficient resources to step-in. The opportunities should help your main business or else your startup ends nowhere, so take the right decision.
10. Understanding Customers
This factor will decide your startup success and failure, you need to understand the customers’ needs and see how you can fulfill them. You also need to see which segment your business lies in, whether your business suits to lower, middle or upper class, and then you need to design the strategies. You can understand your customers through surveys, feedbacks, reviews, etc. and should be open for changes to your business as majority customers wish and should look that it’s not harming the business.
11. Commitment
Your commitment should focus on solutions, not on the problems. As a startup sometimes with your commitments, you need to take risks, work hard, even may lose some money but the commitment should be maintained, this factor straight away connects with trust whether you lose or gain. And one more thing you need to keep in mind that your personal commitments should not affect your business commitments you need to keep in balance to run the startup smoothly. To make your employees committed to their work you must introduce some motivational programs like giving additional benefits if they complete the work on time.
12. Passion
Passion is something you love what you do whatever circumstance you face. Every startup will have a passion that drives them growing forward, one succeeds who keeps that passion for a longer time. You must have the passion and must hire passionate people to your startup so that your business grows at a higher level just like Steve Jobs did for Apple company, he was passionate and he selected the team of passionate people working towards the same goal.
13. Branding
Branding is the way where people recognize the business name, logo, uniforms, business cards, advertisements, etc. How important it is for startups? It is a very important factor to build trust with customers and stand in the market with authority. When you give quality products or services, meet the promises, maintain consistency, and reach the people in any means of communication again and again it creates the brand.
14. Consistency
Consistency is the key for success, as a startup don’t commit for too much delivery that will pressurize and result in providing less quality of service instead even if the business is less show consistency that will bring your business to the next level. Even constantly changing the brand’s logo, color, designs, will look unprofessional and lose trust. Make sure everything is set properly, stick to the standards, and follow the same.
15. Patience
After keeping all these factors in place at last, if you do not keep patience you will ruin your business. Since it is a startup it takes time to get recognize what you do among the people, your efforts will not go waste if you are moving in the right direction. I am recalling the Thomas Alva Edison’s life, he attempts and failed 1000 times in inventing the bulb the next time 1001 time he succeeded what if he stopped trying after 1000 times? So patience is required along with the efforts made.
Conclusion
At last, I would like to say all the above factors are crucial for any startup and even for running business. Each factor is linked to one another directly or indirectly, startups can grow to 10x in the next few years but you need to follow all these factors.
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