Ratish Pandey, Business Coach, Ethique Advisory

He is an experienced business coach, mentor and sales effectiveness trainer working with clients globally. He works closely with his coaches to help them design and execute complex strategic plans that require action and change

Feeling stuck in the rut?
Business, not moving forward?
Business not going the way you visualized?

Every entrepreneur aspires to run a successful and profitable enterprise, but the path to getting there is not a smooth or straightforward one. Living in an ever-evolving world where consumer demands, wants, needs and expectations change at the speed of light, it is critical for a business, established or new, to be agile & adapt nimbly.

To create a sustained lucrative business, here are a few things that should be in place.
Remember: Building a successful business is not a sprint but a marathon.

Perfect your product
Seems like a no-brainer, yet it is something that plenty of companies overlook. To leave the best possible impression on clients, one must research thoroughly before creating their goods or services.
In simple words, Poor product = Poor brand and good product = Good brand.
The mission is to create a product/ service that adds value to the life of the customer.
Seems far-fetched? Well, consider the humble safety pin. Such a simple notion, yet significant. Today, it is a part of almost every individual's life, irrespective of age, education or financial status.
Before finalising the product or service, make "test, test, and test some more!" your mantra. There should never be a compromise on the quality. Invest in research to figure out what works and what does not work for you and your target audience.

Promotion and marketing
Lack of success of a product offtake in the market can happen on two accounts:
• There was not enough marketing to support it or no marketing at all
• There is the wrong kind of marketing backing it up
Both spell trouble. For success, it is critical to get your marketing right.
Marketing and promotion form the two key components of your go-to-market strategy. They educate customers about the offerings, their benefits and create a demand.
It does not stop here. Effective marketing creates a BRAND - recognition, credibility and trust in the entrepreneur, the company & its offerings.
The most common myth about marketing is that it is costly.
In the age of digital marketing, everything is measurable.

Do not miss out on the most effective tool - marketing - to engage your customer, generate demand and get sales, make it work for you. Measure the ROI on your marketing efforts, tune and fine-tune the strategy for best results.

The digital journey starts with a web presence. The first step is to create a website. According to studies, 88 per cent of buyers conduct online research before making a purchase, so having a website and monitoring and managing what is being said about you, your company & its offerings is a must.

Targeting your audience
Before launching a product or service, it is imperative to answer this one question, "Who is my product catering to?"

The answer is critical to arriving at your customer definition, understanding how your offering fits in their life and what challenges it is addressing for the customer. Once in place, creating the right communication is a breeze.
Once the customer is defined, you now know your target market.
Creating marketing strategies tailored to their needs and expectations is simple.

Having established a community that trusts your offerings, they can be relied upon to augment your offerings through word-of-mouth publicity which in the current scenario takes the form of Social Media outreach.
This brings us to another critical aspect to watch out for - after-sales service. If customer loyalty & word-of-mouth publicity is desired, post-sales touchpoints need to be well greased to deliver a superlative experience.

Survey shows poor service results in more (59%) customers turning their back on a company on account of poor service irrespective of the quality of the offering. For a winning strategy, a customer support system needs to be in place that outperforms the competition.
This may mean investment in employees and systems to replicate a consistent experience across touchpoints.
All this goes into creating a brand perception, which grows to be the brand reputation. Digital media is merciless content once published on the digital space stays there, hence maintaining and safeguarding reputation is critical to a company's success.

Build the Dream Team
To build a dream team, you need people with a shared vision and passion by your side.
The first step in the direction starts with defining and articulating who we are, where we want to be, what matters to us along the way.
Hire people that align with the organization's values, have the right talent. Remember, skills can be developed but values define a person.
Finally, invest in talent. It is the right people in the right place that will drive the organization to success. Build in transparency & accountability in your systems and processes.
Create a culture that promotes learning and growth. One that breeds mutual respect encourages people to extend themselves to reach their full potential by learning from each other.
Every successful company boasts of a culture that makes employees stay and often is what attracts fresh talent.

After all, happy homes invite guests galore!!

Finance Control
Last but not least, this is the one that most frequently grinds a company to a halt. The year + of the pandemic has brought to light like never before how critical Financial Control is to keep the wheels rolling. The strenuous trade situations, the inability to reach customers, supply chain disruptions, disappearing investors all spiralled the financial issues to an unmanageable scale, resulting in shutters down for many a business.
Could this have been averted?
Here are a few tools that could help.
Constantly monitor expenses, manually it can be laborious, adopt technology, there are affordable tools that make this as easy as a click of a button.

Review your top expenses on a semi-annual or annual basis to identify areas of reducing them or cutting costs. Analyse the cash gap, work proactively at reducing it - have conversations, renegotiate contracts. Understand the difference between margins and markups. Maintain your profitability, stay competitive marketplace. Staying in regular touch with the company's financial data makes both the employees and the brand more responsive to market conditions.

If you want your business to be more successful, you'll need a plan, so be sure to include all of the strategies discussed here and get ready to taste success!