In order to understand the importance of preparation in going to market with any business, you must first install processes that will support your business. One of the most important overview processes to perform is answering the 5 Key Questions to starting a successful business.

If you do not have answers for any of these questions, it is important to stop and examine the “missing ingredient” that may create long term problems for your new startup.

The Five Key Questions

1. What is Your Substance Factor?

These are experiences, education, career titles, collaborations, successes, or lessons learned from failures you accumulated throughout your career that provide the “expert” substance factor that will give you credibility in your business

2. What Are You?

This is identifying what type of company or Realtor you are and the market you are targeting

3. What Are Your Products, Services, and Market Strategies?

This is simply identifying whether you provide a tangible or intangible product, services only, products and services, and the strategy that allows you to cross sell and or up sell your customer base on an ongoing basis.

The #1 Market Strategy you can review before going to market is provided by the $7 Billion Dollar Man Jay Abraham in “3 Methods To Grow Your Business”

4. Who Is Your Customer?

Identify your customer, their demographics, their propensity to buy, and the habits this target market exhibits. Identify if you will sell to the general public, small businesses, large corporations, or a combination of the aforementioned. Investigate the possibility of opening up to a global-world wide market

5. What Is Your “Differentiating Factor(s)”?

What makes your product-service special or standout from the marketplace? Do you have an advantage that your niche competitors do not have in their businesses? Can you market this differentiating factor and make it a driving factor in your launch? How can you leverage this differentiating factor in order to convince an established business, in your niche and with established-developed channels into the market, to partner-collaborate-or present you to the marketplace?