Synopsis

The overwhelming thousand details involved in getting a new product or service off the ground can bring even the heartiest of hopeful entrepreneurs to their knees. Where to find new customers? How to convince potential customers to buy a product or service? How much to spend on marketing? Where advertise a product or service? Not to mention, every person you talk to about your business has a different solution¼.

Entrepreneurship can be a grueling yet liberating venture. So You Want to Start a Business provides current and prospective business owners with a practical, no-illusions overview of seven key areas of business: general operations, customer service, self-improvement, hiring, marketing, sales, and business policies. Most importantly, this guide will encourage you address those important, soul-searching questions about your future and provide you with a realistic vision of the entrepreneurial life—before you quit your day job.
Author Lee Anne Wonnacott has four decades’ experience in sales, marketing, and hiring. She uses her business savvy to help organize people, budgets, and time, bringing life-changing careers to fruition.

Outline

SECTION  1: GENERAL OPERATIONS
General operations are the moving parts of business. This is where you will set up the building blocks and construct the foundation for your business venture.

Here you will find insights, tools, and real stories of those who have toiled to start their own businesses. See what it looks like and what it feels like to face fears, get around barriers, and develop that intuition!

SECTION 2: CLIENT AND CUSTOMER SERVICE
One-time buyers can become long-term customers simply because of responsive customer service.

This section lays out what the customer service horizon might look like for your business and offers solutions for your toolbox. You will learn how to acquire the right clients and customers—and keep them coming back for more.

SECTION 3: IMPROVING YOU
Better time management. How to recognize if you are straining the budget. How to decide if you should get a power nap or knock on three more doors. If you don’t know where to improve yourself, you’ll get lost.

This section contains a few simple steps that require little or no financial investment and can be done on your own in the privacy of your own garage. Some of the more complex improvements will need your rapt attention.

SECTION 4: RECRUITING, HIRING AND STAFFING
There will come a day when you need to hire someone to help you grow your business. It can be a long and strenuous ordeal, or it can be done easily and smoothly. Hiring the wrong person can cost money, time delays, and make you tear your hair out.

This section shows you how to identify competency and who might be a good team player and producer. It also reveals what certain candidate behaviors might mean and what to watch out for.

SECTION 5: MARKETING OUTREACH
When you tell interested people about what you are doing in your products or services, that is called marketing outreach. Instead of the thirty-second elevator speech, you now have fifteen minutes to take someone along with you. This is you making that one-on-one connection with another person.

This section helps you source individuals that have a concerted interest in your products or services. You will learn how to lay out a roadmap for finding that target audience and the tools needed to inspire their fascination for everything you.

SECTION 6: SALES, SALES, AND MORE SALES
Where do I find more customers?  How do I sell more? Nobody is buying. What do I do? It is a never-ending chant from anyone selling something. You have finessed your product or service until it shines. Everyone smiles politely and exclaims, “How beautiful!” but nobody buys. It might mean that it is you that must change. Specialized sales training. An attitude shift. Strip out the fluff from your life and change your focus to the meat of making sales.

Here you will find resources to help you understand your sales. It starts out with fist-clenching patience, jaw-clenching sensitivity, and people skills that might not come naturally to you.

SECTION 7: YOUR BUSINESS POLICIES
By following policies and procedures, your business will move along much more smoothly, keeping your integrity in place and quality foremost. Why do you create your product the way you do? Why do you deliver your services the way you do? Your policies and procedures demand the work be done in a certain way. Knowing what to do and when to do is effective management, and thus a streamlined business process.

This section covers product liability policy, product return policy, technical support policy, and an employee policy—all of which will be needed at some point in your business.