Businesses offering services such as cleaning, hairdressing, plumbing, car rental, accounting, dental practises, website development, legal services, would be a service only business. A method and plan is followed for starting a service only business, which would ensure a gradual and smooth progress.
Defining a Service-only Business?
Service only businesses specialise in offering services, which meet the needs of its customers.
Instead of offering a tangible product, like clothes, shoes, cakes, etc, these Businesses provide a service to fulfill customer requirements.
A teacher providing private tuitions for GCE Maths, Physics, English, Accounting would be offering their knowledge to educate students for exam preparations.
Service only businesses can cost less to start, however, there is a great deal of preparation and work which is involved in the process.
Step 1: A good business concept
Choosing a good business idea should be something that deeply interests you and that you have a passion to develop.
It is extremely important to do your market research to identify the demand, target market and by contacting people to check if they have a need for your service and would purchase it.
For example, if you want to open your dental practice, check what the competition is like locally, whether any dentists operate in the area, what prices they charge, how long have they been established for and the reviews left by their customers.
Step 2: Have a Business plan
Developing a business plan gives you an idea of what to focus on and the steps that need to be taken in order to achieve that goal.
Business plans include details on the target market, competition, pricing, marketing strategy, cashflow forecasts and the operations.
Therefore, you must create this plan before setting up your Business.
Step 3: Organising your finances
You must plan your finances ahead with the help of a cashflow forecast to determine the incomings and outgoings over a period of time.
A profit and loss account and balance sheet will also identify the expenses, sales and other important figures associated with your Business.
Cutting down on unnecessary expenses and focusing on maximising profit should be the ultimate goal.
Step 4: Creating a website
Once you have decided on a business idea, you must develop a website to display and describe the services being provided. This will help your customers identify what is being offered for sale.
It is extremely important to create a new custom website through any form of website creation service available online.
Website builders are cheap and provide a range of website templates for small businesses, medium businesses and large businesses. You can also add pictures and fonts when creating your website.
Creating a unique and short domain name is important, which will create a brand identity to separate your Business from any other out there in the market.
Once you have created your website through an online web design site or an online platform for webpage creation, you can create an online shop to list, categorise and offer your services for sale.
