Does your product, service, or new concept fill a need in the market?

What you sell needs to address your customers’ needs, or it will fail to gain traction, satisfy demand, and support your business’s further growth.

Market research is a game-changer here, and will help in creating business plans that will keep your activities realistic, manageable, and profitable.

Done properly and thoroughly, market research will enable you to:

• Understand the market size, and its potential to grow (or not)
• Identify your target audiences and the problems they need you to solve
• Know what your competitors are doing, and where you can add value beyond what they offer 
• Work out your selling prices and your go-to-market business model
• See potential issues and blockers early, and make plans to deal with them - or rethink

At EFM, market research is just one of the many areas our business coaching and business mentoring specialists can advise you on.

How do you establish a business structure to deliver on the business plan?

Whilst planning is important in this stage of business growth, the best-laid plans won’t deliver effectively if the business’s structure and setup aren’t doing what they should.

1. Take liability protection, For instance. How will you structure the business to maximise it? The business’s legal entity status will have a significant bearing on this. Sole trader businesses, partnerships, limited liability partnerships, and limited companies are each subject to different levels and extents of liability, some of which may put your personal as well as business assets at risk.
2. Taxation is a critical factor and generally, limited companies offer the most tax-efficient business structure because they often make it possible to access additional reliefs and a lower overall rate of tax, whilst also facilitating growth and exit planning.
3. Incentivisation of key employees is also much easier with a limited company structure, as it enables external capital to be used for this purpose.
4. A management team with clear responsibilities, direct and devolved, measurable key performance indicators (KPIs), and effective recruitment and succession planning will also help to deliver a business that is ready to grow and scale.

At EFM, we’re geared up to help you on all these fronts, with extensive business mentoring and business coaching capabilities, and, in our wider MPA team, comprehensive tax expertise.

Does the concept, product, or service need external funding to get it off the ground?

Whether it’s outside equity, grants, or other money, to get an idea off the ground, you sometimes need additional support to ensure finances are secured for the business.

Broadly speaking, the options include:

• Angel investors – These are individuals or small groups (syndicates) with, typically, an entrepreneurial background and/or extensive experience in the business world. They invest their own money in a small business in exchange for a minority stake.
• Venture capital – These firms invest in early-stage businesses to help them grow and to generate a return on the investment, over between five and seven years. Venture Capital firms also often advise on the business’s strategy, technology, and management.
• Private equity firms – Combining their own money with capital raised from other investors, these firms tend to do larger deals and rarely invest in smaller companies.
• Grants – Grants are cash awards from Government or industry organisations that don’t usually need to be paid back. They may or may not come with conditions such as matched funding and are often subject to a high degree of scrutiny and reporting.

At EFM, we’re experts in enabling businesses like yours to find and access sources of external finance to take your developing business to the next level.

How important is a business plan – and how do you get started with the financials?

In the development phase, a business plan is indispensable. As the saying goes, “Fail to plan, plan to fail”.

A good business plan not only sets out a roadmap for success, identifies strengths and weaknesses, and gives you a yardstick to measure progress against, but it also helps attract funding and investment.

And in this plan, the financials hold pride of place. They determine whether your plan is financially viable in the real world, and where and how the money will be made available to make it work.

Knowing exactly what the financials should include can be tricky for business owners. They must cover, as a bare minimum, a period of typically three years, any assumptions on which the plan is predicated, cash flow management, forecasted expenses, a balance sheet, and break-even analysis.

But every business is different, and yours might require additional insights.

At EFM, we’re your ‘pay as you go’ financial management specialists, and we spend as much or as little time with you as you need to make your financials, your forecasts, and your plan set out a credible route to growth – and success.