RESOURCE CENTRE

Your EnterQuest Bulletin - 3 February 2004

In this week's issue:

• what's the most important thing you need before you start a business?
• how to avoid receiving spam
• more tax increases for small businesses?
• a book about what they CAN'T teach you at business school

What do you need first before you start a business?

Business advice is available to all new start-up and existing small business owners in all sorts of shapes and forms these days. In fact, most of it is worth every penny, and you can also get really good professional advice free or free-ish from accountants, lawyers, professional consultants, libraries, enterprise agencies and even from your bank manager.

But there's also a lot of advice out there online and offline from people who call themselves "experts", who'll claim they can tell you all you need to know about being in business. In fact the DTI, the Government department responsible for stating the obvious about business, employs thousands of these experts, most of whom have never run, been employed by, or spoken to a real business in their lives. Experts indeed.

Now when you started your business, or if you're in the process of starting one now, what do you think is the first and most important thing you need to have before you make the decision to start? And if you've had some "expert" advice, what did they say you needed first?

A business plan, perhaps? You'll certainly benefit by having a plan to help you identify your business objectives and the route you'll take to get there. But not right away, though, there's something far more important you need before you write a business plan.

Start up capital then? OK, that will be important - in fact, vital by the time you get started, but it isn't what you need first.

So it must be employees, training, and advice about selling, you say? Not even close.

OK, then it has to be a product or service idea, and a really good one that you're chuffed down to your toes about. Yes, now we're getting close, but there is one thing that you must have first, be absolutely clear you understand, and be 100% certain you know where it is, before you make any decision to start a business or diversify into a new one. So what is it?

A market to sell to.

A market comprising a large group of potential customers who will want to buy something that you believe you and your new business can offer them. An identifiable bunch of people, businesses, or other organisations that are hungry for, ready, willing and able to pay for a solution or benefit that will meet their needs.

A starving crowd, as they say. If you haven't found one first, there's no point in having a product, business plan, trained employees, or a pot of working capital to chuck at your little venture.

Find a market, or a gap in your target market first. Make sure you've chosen and understand the needs of the market audience you really want to be your target before you make any decision to start up or diversify. If you don't, failure will be just round the corner.

To help you understand the priority of finding a market for your business, we've included a factsheet this week that will explain why every business needs a marketing strategy, and how to implement one.

Here is the factsheet:

A Guide to Creating a Marketing Strategy for your Business

For dozens of other sales and marketing ideas, tips and tactics, check out:

The UK Small Business Marketing Bible

Weekly business tip

How to avoid spam and e-mail viruses

Like all of us, you will no doubt be receiving dozens, or maybe even hundreds of junk e-mail messages every day from people you don't know and in some cases from people you do know.

Spam and e-mail viruses, a bit like expert business advisers, are on the increase, and they're not just a pain in the neck - they're also downright dangerous if a virus gets through your defences.

How do spammers operate?

An e-mail spammer typically buys a list of e-mail addresses with hundreds of thousands or even millions of names on it, for as little as £50. They buy these lists from unscrupulous scumbags that harvest the names from the Internet. They get the e-mail addresses from newsgroup postings, on websites, in chat rooms, in online directories, and so on. The spam marketer (a generous name) then uses special software to send the junk message to millions of people over the world in a flash, and you know the rest.

Other than to generally cause havoc, they do this as part of pyramid selling and other MLM schemes, and in some cases because they presumably really believe it's an effective marketing strategy to annoy someone you don't know with something they're not interested in.

So, what can you do to reduce the amount of spam you get? Here are a few tips:

• Don't display your e-mail address publicly, especially on your website, in newsgroups, in chat rooms, or in online directories.
• Consider using two e-mail addresses, one for your personal and business messages, and one for newsgroups and public display, which will attract more spam.
• Read the privacy policy of any web-based service you sign up to that asks you for your e-mail address. Check to see if they say they will sell your address or rent it. If there's no privacy policy at all, then avoid it like the plague.
• Make sure when you opt in to an e-mail service via a website that you can opt out of any marketing from any "partners" they might have.
• Use e-mail filtering software and see what your ISP has to offer in this respect when choosing whom to have your e-mail account with.
• Report spam to your ISP if you get it.
• Delete any unrecognised messages you get and NEVER open and reply to them telling them to go away, as you'll just confirm that you exist and you'll end up on even more spam lists.

E-mail viruses are even more dangerous, and new ones can proliferate so quickly that they spread worldwide within a matter of hours. Again, don't open unrecognised mail and if there's an attachment ... don't even think about it. Sadly though, too many people do.

You should update your antivirus software regularly, as over 500 new viruses are discovered every month.