| When venturing into a business you want to | | | | - Sales Compensation, Employee Benefits and |
| identify the most essential factors that will make | | | | Compensation / Employee Perks |
| you business succeed. These critical factors are | | | | - Customer Education and knowledge |
| usually thought out by you when you are | | | | - Recruiting and Retention Funnels, Employee |
| envisioning your business and mapping out your | | | | Growth Paths |
| business plan. Chances are you have probably | | | | - Accounting and Financing |
| thought of these factors and its best to think | | | | - Training Development and Coaching |
| about them deeper and outline these factors. | | | | - Marketing 101- Offline Online Direct Advertising |
| These factors will enable you to implement an | | | | and all communications |
| action plan to carry out when starting up your | | | | - Logistics and InventoryProfit Sharing and Equity |
| business. | | | | - Executive Hierarchy, Management and leadership |
| I am consistently asked how do you define your | | | | - Corporate Goals, Quarterly Goals and Annual |
| critical success factors to your business. The | | | | Quotas |
| answer is simple and it really comes down to | | | | - Core Values and Mission Statement |
| What matters to your business? This could include | | | | - Accountability |
| sales,customers,people and/or even the product | | | | - Productivity and Performance Management |
| developed on your part. In the end your success | | | | - Data Analysis and MetricsInternal |
| factors come down to the very core values of | | | | Communications and messaging |
| why you are in business in the first place. | | | | - Board of Directors/ Advisers and panel |
| Below are some ideas (in no particular order) | | | | - Strategical Planning and Market Tactics |
| - Product Creation / Development and Branding | | | | - Business Development Funnel |
| - Product Research, Supply and Demand / | | | | - Joint Ventures and Affiliate Relations and |
| Knowing your market audience | | | | AlliancesOutsourcing |
| - Competition Research. | | | | These are just a few of the many different |
| - Investment Capital and Cost of daily Operation / | | | | business success factors that you need to focus |
| Overhead costs | | | | on to accelerate your business rapidly. My advice |
| - Product Distribution - Includes all kinds of sales - | | | | is to focus on a few of these factors per quarter. |
| offline/online/telemarketing/third party sales/ | | | | Some companies work on 4-7 factors a fiscal |
| affiliate sale etc | | | | year. You can't take on every single business |
| - Lead Generation and Database Management | | | | funnel right away and need time to work on each |
| - Customer Satisfaction and Lifetime Value of | | | | factor thoroughly. |
| your customer | | | | At the end of the day get into the nitty gritty |
| - Production and cost efficiency | | | | vessels that make the muscle of your business. |
| - support - Online / Offline IT, Customer and | | | | Break down the core components. This will enable |
| TechnicalSupport - Turn around times and metrics | | | | you to get a better understanding of what |
| - Quality Assurance / Sales Funnel and | | | | factors needs attention or a game plan and |
| Departmental Hierarchy | | | | where your key strengths lie. |