Entreprenuership and Small Business

Entrepreneurship and small business

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        Entrepreneurs experience a lot of challenges in their efforts to start up a new business that already exists in the market from a different perspective. They have to understand the nature of their competitor and come up with a sound market plan that can help them capture a large number of clients in the market.

Recap of competitor’s profile

        Small business faces different kinds of competition that affect their stability in the market. The competitor is a term used to refer to any person or entity that poses a threat to development and existence of the small business. In any business, competitors he profiles that they use and that contain different elements.   The features can help a business planner to determine the strengths and weaknesses of his or her competitor and even having a glance of the future trend of the competitor’s business. Such elements include firm identification, determining the environmental forces that keep their business on the run, knowing the credibility and assets of the company. The researcher continues to look for operational capabilities of the rival and the level of innovation input for their business, revenue and marketing strategy used to improve the revenue, key players in their organization that is the employees, directors and management team. Finally, the planner analyses the financial resources of the competitor by looking for published information regarding the company or carrying out research, this include ROI, and other financial statements of the business (Marketing, 2016)

Marketing referrals

        Basing in mind that my small business idea is bookkeeping for other small business owners, we need first to acknowledge the fact that not all business managers are experienced bookkeepers. Starting a business aimed at bookkeeping would attract most of the managers as they want to keep track of their business progress. According to ‘The Freelance Bookkeeper Blog’ (2012), most bookkeepers get clients through word of mouth with the first few clients being the one he knows or has direct connections with the entrepreneur. Additionally, the manager could add testimonials from satisfied customers and to their LinkedIn profile and the business website to access more clients. Gradually the business grows as the clients who have gained trust in the quality of the services you offer to go ahead to make testimonials to other and recommended for your services.

Bootstrapping and conserving cash

        Bootstrapping is a way of conserving cash with less borrowing of money and reducing interest costs. In a situation of decreasing economic cycle, an entrepreneur would opt for different methods that would assist him to save more cash. For example, trade credit would help him to maximize his financial resources in a short period during the business startup. Factoring is another way that could help him improve money flow into the enterprise. Bookkeeping records can be sold to anyone who is willing to have a knowledge of keeping financial statements records (Staff, 2016).

Competitor profile

        In bookkeeping, competition arises from accountants who during downtimes seek to pick bookkeeping business. Accountants have a substantial knowledge of bookkeeping strategies, and, in fact, accounting industries rank higher than bookkeeping industry according to NAICS. Therefore, there is a need to analyze the competitor profile for an accounting industry to cope up with the competition in the market.

        Understanding the SWOT analysis of your competitor is important in making sure that the business grows. Additionally, critical examination of the competitor’s profile should be considered as well. All small businesses have a similar matrix of competition with the difference coming to be what should be incorporated into each component and how. Understanding the objectives of the competitor regarding determining what kind of clients they intend to avail their services is crucial. Analysis of other parts of the profile such as; the type of marketing strategies they employ, how to equally share the market size they have occupied with them and how they will respond upon you entering the market should be understood correctly. Most information regarding the competitor can be obtained from their websites where mission and vision of the company can be seen. A visit to their locations and witnessing how they carry out their operations can be of great significant in developing innovativeness that will outdo their mode of operations. Lastly, carrying out a lot of research from the internet and asking people about the company can also help in reducing competition when entering the market (Inc.com, 2015).

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