Small Business Critical Success Factors

Journey to
Success
ZADI Venture Advisors 1zia@milestonevison.com
Small Business

Small Business
Critical Success
Factors

Critical Success Factors
Small Business & Startup
Leadership
Customer
Marketing
Money
ZADI Venture Advisors zia@milestonevison.com 3

“Passion to Win”

Leadership
Vision
Commitment
Motivation
Patience
Team

Leadership
This is the first and foremost factor. It will make the venture or break it. The
passionate leadership who is willing to sacrifice everything for the success of the
venture will make it happen. Leadership will remain single most important factor
in the success. Leader must lead by example. He must lead from the front.
Vision
Vision is all about how the leader looks into future. How big he is looking into,
how clear it is? Yes clear vision is very important point so that team can start
marching to achieve it. Vision makes task of the team very clear. Clear Vision is
near to success.
Commitment
The commitment of the leader to the venture clearly makes it a point for the
team. When team looks at commitment of the leader they just believe in the idea
and work passionately to succeed. This passion to succeed cannot come without
commitment.

Motivation
The motivation of leader, but more than that his ability to motivate his team to
success is very important. Motivation is energy, energy to move on, energy to see
the future and march ahead.
Patience
This is another quality of leader to wait patiently for success after trying hard with
all energy available, continuously trying hard. Patience is important in for leader to
keep the team motivated and moving towards success.
Team
Success is always of team. Remember very important point, when success comes it
is always of team, but failure comes it is always of the leader. Learn to take
responsibility. Team is most vital component of success. Choose the best talent who
can be the partner in success who has same wavelength as that of you and are
equally committed. The People will remain the only source of success.

Customer is King

Marketing
Product and
Place
Marketing
Advertising and
Promotion
After Sales

Customer is King
The delighted customer is everything. The smile on the face of customer is very important,
when you deliver product or services better than expectation, will make him delighted.
Produce what customers want, don’t sell what you produce. The customer first is core to
the success of everything. Keeping him ahead of everything else will create a stunning
success.
Product and Place
The 4 marketing P’s are very important; define your Product, Price and Promotion and
Place. The best product and services can only be offered to the customers who are willing
to buy at the price they see the value for money. This plays very important role.
Marketing
The marketing is all about reaching the right audience at right place at right value. The
whole value chain of marketing and its front end plays vital role in the success of the
venture. The well-greased machinery and well planned marketing will deliver fantastic
results.

Advertising and Promotion
This is all about appealing the target customer. Reaching him, educating him about your
product, education him about yourself. Why this product or services are best suited for
him. Advertising and promotion should also study the how to and where to advertise and
where to make promotion. The choice of youths will definitely be different than that of
families.
After Sales
Sales is the beginning of the relationship. Know your customer well. See how he will come
back again and again buying again and again, also bring his friends and family to you.
Service with smile will encourage the buyer to visit gain.

Financial planning for every penny is very important,
you need to see every penny you will need while
planning for venture. 1000 days cash is what
entrepreneur should think of. Small business needs lot
of initially input before it can break even. Operating
break-even usually comes over 18 months and overall
break even will need 24 to 30 months before company
starts making bucks. 1000 days cash requirements are
what should be planned at start of venture. This
money can come as and when required but must be
arraigned before. Most of the small companies see
cash squeeze which results into the collapse of the
best idea.

Key Performance
Indicators

These are the milestones. They will tell you
about your journey, where you reached and
how far you from destination. It is most
important part of the journey so that you
should miss road and time and track of
journey. These indicators are for analysis,
study and correction if there is any deviation,
why it happens, what to do to avoid any such
deviations. These are the indicators on the
journey to success, how far is success.ZA

Financial Indicators
Burn Out Rate
Break Even Point
Profit

Burn Out Rate
What I always advises small start-ups to have patience. My number is 1000 days.
When you do not have enough money then don’t expand, work only as much you
can handle. Aggressive premature expansion is most of first and foremost reason
of collapse of small businesses.
Breakeven Point
This is second important indicator, how far venture is from making no profit and no
loss. There will be operating breakeven point and overall breakeven point. If you
are not missing on operating breakeven point then you are on mark. Then look at
over all breakeven point, are you on target and if not then why? Measure
everything very well so that the journey is easy and everything is on track.
Profit
This is most important of all. You must make money, on time, every time. There is
no other road to success unless you make money for yourself and your
stakeholders.

Is He Delighted?

Who is buying
Find out who is buying your product. Is your target audience is correct.
If target segment and market is correct then product or the services will
hit and you will complete the journey very successfully.
Customer Satisfaction
Customer Relationship Management is extremely important. CRM plays
most critical part in connecting with your customer. Is your customer
satisfied? Know him well? Will he come back and what he wants? These
are the things which will make your company ahead of others.
Delivering what customers want
It is very critical to success. Sell the products which customers want to
buy and enjoy rather than make the product and sell it to the
customers.

“A customized solution to
Customers need is the future.”

On time every time – Managing the value cycle
What is value chain? Why it is important? The best raw material, the best process
and delivery system manage by the best people in the industry makes the smile on
the face of the customer. This smile on the face of your customer will make you
successful, and nothing else. Define the quality standards from one, for raw
material, for process and for product. On-time delivery of raw material, on time
production and delivery of product and services are very important point of
success. Quantify them, manage them and deliver them. This will bring you
success.
Stakeholder satisfaction
Stakeholders are all about everyone, investor, shareholder, vendor, supplier and
customer society and environment. All these are stakeholder, manage them well,
make them happy and happiness and smile will come back to you.

When You Failed To Deliver Promised Results
Why Does Startup Fail

Failure is learning experience. All
human being makes mistakes. The
best one is who accepts these mistakes
and correct them. Success comes to
such people who are ready to learn.
Learning is never ending process,
every time a lesson is learnt to improve
upon.

Five Reasons – Why Startups
Fails
Human - Entrepreneur
Customer
Product
Money
Planning

Wrong Man in The Storm
“Sailing Ship With
Courage and Patience.”
Why Do Startups Fail?

The Human Factor
The Wrong Man
The Team
Partner

Human

We are in 21st century. This century is
knowledge driven. The industrial era and
labor intensive production is gone. Now
everything is knowledge driven. The
knowledge which bring smile to the faces of
your customer and make them feels the value
they have derived from the money they have
paid for. In this era Peoples are most
important. They can make or break the
project, the venture. Success stories are
always People driven, never anything else.

Who drives the success?
Entrepreneur is the first line. He is the one who will
make it successful. He is the one who is to be blamed for
the failures along with his team. What is the reason,
which makes the best of the ideas fail? The basic
element is motivation. When entrepreneur loses his
motivation to pursue the idea, decline start. The Vision
to create an enterprise which can grow with time and
efforts is his. When he loses hope the project goes
down. The ability to stand, up and downs of the market
and confidence to take-on the challenge the market has
created is what makes the difference. When the vision is
not clear, the plan is not streamlined, it is difficult to get
the success.

The wrong man
Startup is for entrepreneur. They are the one who get success. But most of the
startups are the creation of technical man or the manager. The man knows the
technology and he knows it best, he has created the best. Unfortunately the project
fails to deliver.
These are wrong people doing this project for wrong reason. An entrepreneur needs
to be passionate about his idea and his commitment to it. This is what makes the
difference.
The Team
This is another element in success. The right people are most critical assets. These
people will be the core of the success. They are the one who will bring success and
drive the company. Choose the right people who have same vision and are willing to
work hard and sacrifice is required to make it happen. The team will play a decisive
role in getting success.
The Partner
Entrepreneur need partner. Every project needs partner. If the partners are not good
and cohesive with idea of entrepreneur they are one of the reasons of failure. When
partner does not share vision of the entrepreneur and are not committed then
problems starts coming up.

CustomerWho Is Your Customer?
What They Want?
How They Can Be Delighted?
What Is Their Proposition Of Value For
Money?
Where He Is Located?
Does Your Product Fit Into His List Of
Priorities?

When this target audience goes wrong or
there is not enough demand then venture
fails. When venture fail to live up to the
demands of the customers or they does
not exist the venture fails. There is
possibility that the venture is never been
able to reach its targeted audience, i.e.
customers effectively and efficiently. This
is failure of marketing and advertisement.

Product
• The service or the product which are easy will
be successful. They must be easy, as easy as
customers wants. When innovative products
or services are planned, read the minds of
customers and try to understand them, pre-
launch as well as test marketing.
• When these product does not fit in the frame
and mind set of customers and does not
delight them enough the failure is the destiny.
ZADI Venture Advisors
zia@milestonevison.com 33

Money
• Nothing moves without money. Planning it and looking
at invisible before starting a business the way to
success. The managing money is a key to success.
• The most important, if whatever is planned and that
does not worked out, what will happen. Even though
venture is doing well, it is making money but response
is slow but picking up. The trend is steady, but money
is finished. This is unfortunate that money will kill the
business, the lending for startup or small business is
not really good enough, under these circumstances
small businesses crumble and die.

Planning
• Planning plays very important role in success which
starts with idea and vision of the leader and he builds
on to shape up his dream to the reality. While building
this dream on the paper really makes it difficult and it
misses many points. When crucial points are missed
the plans goes awry and fail to deliver to the
expectations of the entrepreneur.
• The wrong planning is another reason, when
entrepreneur fail to see how the journey will be taken,
the rout and sub-rout and mile stones are not decided
then the plan remains hazy and shaky. Such incomplete
cannot give the success.

ZADI Venture Advisors
zia@milestonevision.com
+96565510448

Small Business Critical Success Factors

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