Entrepreneurs – Is It A Window Of Opportunity Or A Brick Wall?
Entrepreneurs – Is It A Window Of Opportunity Or A Brick Wall?
* New Ground: Are you absolutely certain that no one else is doing what you want to do? Have a good search on your favorite search engine. Be careful if you want to ask around – you don’t want to let people know too much and lose your market advantage.
* Previous Failures: Have people tried to do this before and failed at it? Examine why and be sure that you can avoid these problems when you start your new business.
* Will It Work: I know of a company that thought that it would be a good idea to provide fresh flowers to local businesses instead of the potted plants that are commonly found. The business folded when it was discovered that the life of flowers in a business atmosphere was only a few days – which meant that the customer either had wilted flowers or very little return on their investment. It turned out that other florists had investigated this possibility and turned it down for the same reason.
* Stock: Can you obtain the raw goods you need on a regular basis. If it is skilled staff that you need – will you be able to attract them to work for you? There was a couple who were intent on providing real British sandwiches to beach goers in Cyprus as opposed to Greek based snack food. What they completely forgot to investigate is the availability of British type bread in Cyprus! For our American friends, British sandwiches are flat and triangular and need British sliced bread to survive!
* Existing Barriers: Are there barriers to entry to this market such as large, incumbent providers doing something similar? If you have bemoths such as large insurance, travel or retail companies that own the majority of the market – one of two things are going to happen. Either they will stop you entering the market or they will wait until you establish yourself and then take your ideas as their own. We all know of great products that made us say “why didn’t I think of that?” which are now regularly produced by the major companies. Alternatively it can take an exorbitant amount of money to become established. EasyJet – which found a window of opportunity and established a profitable business from it, was started by the son of a Greek shipping billionaire!
* Interested Market: Is the reason that no one else has entered the market, that people are not really that interested? Make sure that it is not your enthusiasm alone that makes the opportunity so appealing. Do your research. Are people asking for something like this? Do people make do with other items and are unlikely to change? Those catalogues you get in your junk mail are full of “useful gadgets” that can not find a retailer.
* Large Enough Market: Do enough market research to ensure that you will be able to sell enough products or services to make a profit. Sometimes windows of opportunities are too small to get through!
* Enough Profits: Lastly, are all your efforts going to result in sufficient sustainable profits to make it all seem worthwhile?
Here are a few windows of opportunity that have made people millionaires:
* Yellow stickies – where would we be if we did not have a pile of these on our desk when we came back from lunch?
* Cat’s eyes – those glass lights that show the edge and middle of the roads at night and during inclement weather.
* Body Shop – who produced make up and bathing items that we don’t feel guilty about.
* Sock Shop – oh the joy of being able to replace socks, stockings and tights whilst at work.
* EasyJet – for no frills, low cost air travel around Europe.
And anything else that is the best thing since sliced bread (and there’s another one!)
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To have a window of opportunity that will be viable and profitable you need to have a number of factors working in your favor:
* New Ground: Are you absolutely certain that no one else is doing what you want to do? Have a good search on your favorite search engine. Be careful if you want to ask around – you don’t want to let people know too much and lose your market advantage.
* Previous Failures: Have people tried to do this before and failed at it? Examine why and be sure that you can avoid these problems when you start your new business.
* Will It Work: I know of a company that thought that it would be a good idea to provide fresh flowers to local businesses instead of the potted plants that are commonly found. The business folded when it was discovered that the life of flowers in a business atmosphere was only a few days – which meant that the customer either had wilted flowers or very little return on their investment. It turned out that other florists had investigated this possibility and turned it down for the same reason.
* Stock: Can you obtain the raw goods you need on a regular basis. If it is skilled staff that you need – will you be able to attract them to work for you? There was a couple who were intent on providing real British sandwiches to beach goers in Cyprus as opposed to Greek based snack food. What they completely forgot to investigate is the availability of British type bread in Cyprus! For our American friends, British sandwiches are flat and triangular and need British sliced bread to survive!
* Existing Barriers: Are there barriers to entry to this market such as large, incumbent providers doing something similar? If you have bemoths such as large insurance, travel or retail companies that own the majority of the market – one of two things are going to happen. Either they will stop you entering the market or they will wait until you establish yourself and then take your ideas as their own. We all know of great products that made us say “why didn’t I think of that?” which are now regularly produced by the major companies. Alternatively it can take an exorbitant amount of money to become established. EasyJet – which found a window of opportunity and established a profitable business from it, was started by the son of a Greek shipping billionaire!
* Interested Market: Is the reason that no one else has entered the market, that people are not really that interested? Make sure that it is not your enthusiasm alone that makes the opportunity so appealing. Do your research. Are people asking for something like this? Do people make do with other items and are unlikely to change? Those catalogues you get in your junk mail are full of “useful gadgets” that can not find a retailer.
* Large Enough Market: Do enough market research to ensure that you will be able to sell enough products or services to make a profit. Sometimes windows of opportunities are too small to get through!
* Enough Profits: Lastly, are all your efforts going to result in sufficient sustainable profits to make it all seem worthwhile?
Here are a few windows of opportunity that have made people millionaires:
* Yellow stickies – where would we be if we did not have a pile of these on our desk when we came back from lunch?
* Cat’s eyes – those glass lights that show the edge and middle of the roads at night and during inclement weather.
* Body Shop – who produced make up and bathing items that we don’t feel guilty about.
* Sock Shop – oh the joy of being able to replace socks, stockings and tights whilst at work.
* EasyJet – for no frills, low cost air travel around Europe.
And anything else that is the best thing since sliced bread (and there’s another one!)
Entrepreneurs Is It A Window Of Opportunity Or A Brick Wall - To learn more about this author, visit 's Website.
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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