I’ve been thinking very much about the best recipe to win the market with my company and the conclusion is that you must fight! Yes, fight. Simple isn’t it? It seems very easy and elementary to state something like that but believe me, is not.

Is not when fight means:

Focus, Insistence, Goals, Help, Team

Could you say that something appears to be a little more difficult? I think so and I think that talking about a recipe that must be delicious, all the ingredients must be chosen with care, merged together properly, and when melted, reach the result everybody waits for: something incredibly tasteful.

But let’s come back to the scope of my article and discuss about another recipe, the recipe that I thing is the base for successful business.

 Focus.

We need focus. Select our market sectors and chose the ones most suitable for us and our product portfolio. Once selected, concentrate on the most promising ones, forget to follow up everything with the risk of loosing time, money and effectiveness. We shall not be afraid to change strategy and eventually modify our products in order to be winning in the market. Competition is very strong, especially when we are a start-up, newcomers are in any case enemies to be eliminated. We need also to differentiate. Key differentiator can help to gain customers.

Insistence

Success can’t be reached without insisting. Today is very complicated to find customers, I know. That’s the reason why we need to be very committed, aggressive if necessary, and insist to reach our targets. Nowadays if you want to make business you must never give up!

 Goals

Mandatory to have clear goals and a strategy to reach them. Never do the error to “try” something for collecting some purchase orders. A well structured and professional Business Plan is one of the pillars on which we need to base our commercial actions and again, be realistic, stake holders and bosses like big figures, of course, but at the end you should reach them and here is where problems can come.

Help

Intended as Financial Help. This is a must. Quite often, due to the fact that business plans are made without paying too much attention on the business environment a company is going to present itself, it happens that funds are missing or are delivered in a totally insufficient amount. Why? Good point isn’t it? For example,iIt can happen that sales forecast was too optimistic and revenue consequently not enough, so even if investors are delivering funds, are not enough for a good company cash flow.

Help from investors is very important especially if we are talking about startups. Management shall inform the board of directors and investors in the most accurate way about how business and cash flow are going, clearly communicate if some actions must be taken because of change of strategy and above all , if new funds are needed.

Team

Last important ingredient is the team. Without a strong team, committed to reach success in a company it will be very difficult to gain the market. Many times in my experience I saw very promising projects failing because of a simple reason: no team. Of course is a very important duty of managers promoting team building at each level of the organization and controlling personnel to be sure that people is cooperating but sometimes is also a matter of some employees that are so committed and target oriented that are able to involve all the colleagues. Furthermore, we don’t have to think about a team just related to a department a division or a branch of a company; a very good team must be intra-departmental: sales, R&D, Financial departments, for example, must work together and help each other. At some level information flow is a must. Let’s see an example: Sales must talk to R&D about market requests, R&D must talk to Sales about feasibility of some products, Financial department must collect information from R&D about project financing and investments.

Well, I hope I could give my simple recipe for winning the market. I know that this is simple but not so easy to implement in many organizations. Many reasons: different behaviours and work experiences, different cultures and different nationalities, different “political” interferences that can “affect” every single element I’ve been describing. In any case without this five ingredients I’m firmly convinced that is not possible to reach a complete and durable success in business.