What makes it tick to survive in business, – not only survive but succeed and grow, is a subject matter for deeper analysis, within the vast arena of strategic and successful business planning. A large number of small business start-up strategies, have been postulated, but some of these are extremely useful in the planning process and offer the right keys to survive and grow in business.

Most entrepreneurs seem to make the start with a highly fanciful idea that has germinated in their minds, – ideas are welcome and undeniably the crux of any good business plan. What one needs is the precautionary steps to determine whether the idea meets a few practical requirements – if the new product/service is a clear step ahead of the others, if it will solve a prevailing issue/need better, plus if it will expand on the user circle directly or indirectly.

An in-depth analysis of the functioning of small businesses seems to provide some clear directions for survival and growth, the first being the power of the planning process, and the second the all important influx rate of capital to meet the bare minimum needs, as spelled out in the business plans. Very often businesses, which have survived for five years or more, have invariably shown marked strengths in both of the above.

Pulse of the market: Top in the order of importance, successful business planning requires measuring the real pulse of the market, as against complicated mathematical projections/estimates of sales and numbers. What one needs is the practical insight into whether the products cover a gap in an existing market, or the affordability of the targets, or even whether the customer has the right perceptions about the product.

The idea concept: Successful home based businesses also have to capitalize on the impetus from new ideas by reorienting their strategies to use them (ideas) effectively. Ideas and solutions should trigger positive customer response by establishing solutions, or by infusing recurring demand,  in effect improving the customer’s perception of contentment and satisfaction.

Business plans and Finances: Businesses that survive and also grow seem to have a strong armory comprising of a well-conceived dynamic business plan and the right mix of schemes for capital funding and financial inputs. While the business plan acts as the forerunner for the business, including the finances, an integrated outlook based on internal and external performances should ensure the proper environment for the successful functioning of the business. A plethora of funding agencies coming from governmental/non governmental sectors, chambers of commerce and trade associations offer various types of financial support to business enterprises, in the form of grants/loans and so on. What is needed is the right combination of financial planning with effective business strategies to meet what the business needs at the appropriate stages of start-up, development, manufacturing or marketing.

Core competencies: An innovative idea/product, coupled with a receptive market situation may not be enough for a business to survive, except when sufficiently equipped with the basic core abilities/competencies in terms of consistency in production, supply, the right mix of skills for buying, making and selling, apart from others.

Mentors: Successful entrepreneurs are not born, but made. Very often businesses that survive and grow, are run by entrepreneurs who are able to acquire the right solutions at the right time for many of their problems. Taking the clues from previous successes is an art, and successful business plans need to adopt from proven models, and tailor them to suit the individual business. Again, when entrepreneurs do not have the necessary skills, in special disciplines, the right thing would be to use the services of a consultant, or advisor or even locate a mentor, who could guide and support with their expertise on some critical areas, identify the plus and the minus and help him/her in the tools and techniques of successful business planning and ultimately continued successes in business.

Last but not least it is absolutely necessary to understand that adequate time and effort is allowed for planning, at the time of starting the business (formative stage), which is none else than the hard core of successful business planning.

In any business, launching your product in the market is an event that comes at the end of your planning cycle. If you are expecting that you will first launch the product and then work backwards, you will be making a huge mistake. The starting point is with having a business plan in place along with sales strategy, product positioning as well as promotions and distribution plans in place.

Along with your product strategy runs the sales strategy and promotions plan too. All of these are aimed at building continuously a customer database that can be worked upon for getting sales leads. The database building is not one time job ending with product launch but all your promotions and interactions with community through internet posting, forum and blogs should be aimed at adding customers to the database.

Just technical capability and knowledge will not make you a good businessman. To be successful you must know the other functional areas that are important in business namely marketing and finance. Though you may not be involved in day to day operations, you should be involved as management and be able to control the operations.

A successful businessman is he who always keeps a watch on competition and is ahead of them. He is also aware of the environment in which he exists including socio, economic and political climate around him.

The future of your product and your business is governed by your investment into innovation and quality. These two if you focus on and get it right, they can take you ahead of competition and help you retain the leadership for a long time.

To be able to build long term future of your business, it is essential that you have a short term as well as long term plan and vision for your business. Product innovation and R&D should be a part of the plan and focusing on these two along with adapting tomorrows technology today will undoubtedly push you ahead of competition and make you a leader in your segment.

Your aggressive growth strategy should also involve plans to get into joint venture with other companies so that you are able to leverage both on your strength as well as borrow from your partner’ strength and grow your business faster.

Joint ventures can be extremely profitable for both parties provided they are in line with your strategic business plans that you have drawn up for yourself and your company. Besides the partners should share the same ethos, values and outlook that you have towards business as well as opportunities. It is important to ascertain these factors before committing huge financial resources to the JV partnership.

The current century is running on banks, finance, loan and Mortgage. From the number one businessman to a middle class individual everyone needs to know about mortgage and financing advice. Mortgaging is a kind of commitment and agreement done till death. Mortgage means taking a financial loan or advance from any business institution, bank or loan firm. Today, lot of people needs mortgaging advice because of poor and bad credit issues. Poor credit history is responsible for ruining a person’s professional and financial life and hence, he gets excluded from the list of credit worthy people in the eyes of banks and financial institutions.

On the ground of present market scenario, it becomes impossible to deal with mortgaging along with bad credit. Bad credit history can either be a result of a bankruptcy or liquidity. Looking at these conditions, any bank and firm gets disappointed for giving mortgage and loan to such a person- who has not paid the earlier loan installments on time. To get the benefit of mortgage and financing advice or benefit, you can take help of online financial institutions. These online financial institutions take care to provide you mortgage even after knowing your bad credit ratio. People with credit ratio below than 350 are not applicable for mortgage and loan from local banks but these institutions even provide loan after bankruptcy or liquidity.

How to find online banks and institutions?

Getting a loan approved from bank is a big deal for many businessmen but with the help of online financial institutions and banks, loan and mortgaging has become simple and speedy. Getting mortgage for buying property, auto or personal needs is possible with the help of online banking institutions. To know more about these firms, you can simply Google it. With the help of Internet, you can reach too many online banks and institutions that provide minimum interest loan in spite of knowing bad credit history and bankruptcy. Trusting these firms is not a big deal because you can find many of your local friends taking loan and mortgaging advice from the same firm.

Thus, mortgage and financing advice becomes easy, quick and simple with the help of advanced Internet technology. To mortgage a property or personal loan, you just need to visit these online institutions and submit all the required details. Mortgaging has become easy with the introduction of these firms.