Business Tips: The Five Parts of Every Successful Business

David Brett-Williams: The Five Parts of Every Business

Roughly defined a business is a repeatable process that:

Creates and delivers something of value…
That other people want or need…
At a price they are willing to pay….
In a way that satisfies the customer’s needs and expectations…
So that the business brings in enough profit to make it worthwhile for the owners to continue operation.

It doesn’t matter if you are running a solo venture or a million pound brand. Take any one of these five factors away and you don’t have a business.

A venture that doesn’t create value for others is a hobby. A venture that doesn’t attract attention is a flop. A venture that doesn’t sell the value it creates is a non-profit organisation. A venture that doesn’t deliver what it promises is a fraud. A venture that doesn’t bring in enough money to keep operating will inevitably close.

At the core of every business is fundamentally a collection of five interdependent processes, each of which leads into the next:

Value Creation. Discovering what people need or want, then creating it.

Marketing. Attracting attention and building demand for what you have created.

Sales. Turning prospects into paying customers.

Value Delivery. Giving your customers what you have promised and ensuring that they are satisfied.

Finance. Bringing in enough money to keep going and make your effort worthwhile.

If these five things sound simple, it’s because they are. Business is not rocket science – it is simply a process of identifying a problem and finding a way to solve that problem that benefits both parties. Anyone who attempts to make it sound more complicated than this is trying to impress you or sell you something that you don’t need.

These five parts are the basis of every good business idea and business plan. If you can clearly define each of these five processes for your business you will have a complete understanding of how it works. If you are thinking about starting a new business, defining what each one of these steps looks like in detail is a great place to start. If you can’t describe your business idea in terms of these core processes you probably don’t understand it well enough to make it work.

I hope you have found these processes helpful. Apply them and let me know the results. In future blogs we will look at each of these five processes in more detail.

Just one more thing before you go … I’d like to ask you to do one important thing for me – spread the word about this article.

That is all -

David