5 Keys to Successful Business Management

5 Keys to Successful Business Management

Successful business management starts with fundamentals.

Our guide starts you off with just that.

Fundamentals of a sound business start with a solid foundation.

The foundation of your business must be built on solid ground, and the fundamentals detailed in this section will provide you exactly that.

Without further delay, here are 5 keys to successful business management,

1. Maintaining Good Health

Without question, long term business success is totally dependent on you maintaining good health.

The reasons, without going too far in depth, are obvious.

Good health allows you to have the energy, alertness, and will help ensure the longevity to accomplish all that is required to operate and maintain a successful business.

Good health, however, goes beyond that.

Your health benefits all your family and friends as well. You see, every minute that you are on this earth, you are impacting the people and the surroundings that you come into contact with every minute of every day.

Face it, without good health, you will have less time on this earth. And, let me tell you from experience, that time is the most precious commodity you have.

Make the most of all the time that is allotted you by maintaining the best possible health you can.

Good health includes a healthy mind to go along with a healthy body. Being sharp and alert mentally is essential when it comes to maintaining a successful business.

2. Planning

Business success is totally reliant on PLANNING, PLANNING, PLANNING and MORE PLANNING.

It is an essential key and the most important step to ensuring long term business success.

Without planning, your business can be compared to a ship at sea without a rudder. No rudder, no steering, and not being able to steer your business is sure to result in many perils and accidents along your journey to success.

So What is a Plan Anyway?

Webster’s defines it as: A method or scheme for achieving or doing something.

For the purpose of business, a plan is a series of defined, cooperative actions that occur in a certain order to attain a stated outcome by a desired deadline.

It is important to understand that the above tells that there are actions that need to be completed. These actions must have someone identified as the person responsible for completing it. You must also be sure to identify only one person responsible.

The old saying is “If more than one person is responsible, then nobody is responsible.”

More importantly, these actions must include deadlines. The placing of a due date, or deadline, provides the plan with sense of urgency and obligation to complete it.

This is partially due to the sense of gratification that humans receive when completing a documented task. The mere checking off of the completed task provides us with an inner sense of gratification.

Due dates also allow us to measure the progress of the plans we make, and provide us with the ability to understand how effective and sound our plans really are.

All levels of your small business success program require sound, effective plans.

For example, the ultimate goal of your business is to profit and progress, this requires a business plan that will usually identify company goals for 6 months, 1-3 years, and 5-7 years.

In addition, the business plan, contains many sections that define many actions that will take place for each of these time intervals. Each interval and every section of the overall business plan will require a certain level of planning in order for the overall business plan to accomplish the goals that were stated within the defined time-frame.

As you can see, the business plan has now spiraled into sub-plans, and yes, these sub plans will spiral into micro plans.

That is why business success planning is so important.

Fortunately, it is a well known fact that the most effective plans are built in advanced.

In other words, the more planning you do up front, the better. Advanced planning is responsible for lower costs and higher quality in major business and industry sectors worldwide.

Advanced planning will also limit the number of sub and micro plans necessary for your small business management program to be successful.

When you sit down and perform advanced planning for your process of conducting business, you will be eliminating the need to create plans as you go.

The oldest line in the book about planning is still the most true of them all:

Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan, Success is sure to follow

3. Market Niche

Your small business idea, turned into a desire to start your own business.

Your desire led you to develop your idea and turn it into a real business.

You have identified your market and your small business is now ready to design your product and/or service to this defined market sector.

The question is: What will convince this market to buy my product and/or purchase my services? The answer is developing a Market Niche.

What is a Niche and Why is it So Important?

Your niche is a characteristic or feature of your product, service, or business that sets you apart from the rest of the competition.

Face it, unless your product or service is totally new and patented by you, there are probably other companies providing it as well. That does not mean that you cannot be successful at providing your product or service to the market.

It simply stresses the importance of developing yourself a market niche.

Your market niche can also isolate a certain population of the market that may not be currently focused upon. Perhaps your product or service appeals to a certain gender, age group, size, lifestyle and countless other variations of a particular market sector.

This is where niches are developed and refined to produce an appeal that surpasses the competition.

Your small business is unique and I would not begin to tell you exactly what niche may or may not work in your market. But I can tell you that the sky is the limit in this area of business.

Develop your niche to suit your business, goals and market, and you will be that much further ahead of the competition.

4. Positive Attitude

You may question how a positive attitude made it to the top 5 keys to successful business management.

The answer to me is obvious; a positive attitude keeps your mind out of touch with negative influence. Subjecting you and your small business to negative influence is perhaps the most damaging thing you can do to your business.

You already have your hands full with the many plans you have to tend to without subjecting yourself to the worry, anxiety and stress that a negative attitude brings.

A positive attitude also helps you stay open minded, and being open minded in business is essential to success. Keeping an open mind allows you accept and appreciate change, and whether you accept this or not, change in business is critical to success.

A business that does not evolve and change with the times, is doomed to fail.

Keeping a positive attitude will provide you and your business an edge that will show up in all areas of your small business management program.

A positive attitude is also very contagious, and will affect your employees, partners, and other business affiliations.

Make sure your business holds a positive attitude at all times, and the reward will be plentiful throughout your business’ life.

5. Resources

This is an extremely broad subject, but for the purposes of this business success guide, we will address the basic resources required to operate an effective business.

Below is a brief outline of the resources you should be aware of and have knowledge of and/or access to:

i. Start-Up

During the start up period, you will need access and help from a variety of resources such as financial, legal advice, marketing and advertising, prototype, market studies and research, building permits, contractors, zoning commissions, and many others.

Your small business commodity will dictate which resources are required. The key is to identify them and secure them in advance.

ii. Ongoing

Once up and running, your small business will need access to many of the resources named above and resources such as, suppliers, accounting, maintenance, delivery and packaging just to name a few.

Again, the key is to identify the resources needed, secure them and maintain a positive relationship at all times.

In business, it is not wise to burn bridges, you never know when you will have cross the bridge again.

iii. Technical

In order for you and your business to progress, you will need technical and educational resources.

Advancing your business and keeping up with fierce competition, required staying on top of technical advancements and maintaining knowledge of your business and market.

The key here is to always stay aware of technical and educational requirements and keep these resources very close to you and your business interests.

iv. Overhead

Your small business, even if it is a home based business, has overhead.

Electric, phone, utilities, services, machinery, equipment, and the list goes on and on. All of these items are resources that are key to the successful operating of your business.

Make sure you maintain them in good working order at all times.

Wanted to add any successful business management tip, do in the comments!

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