IDENTIFYING THE PURPOSE OF A BUSINESS

Whether your starting up or in business already, its a crucial to be clear about what your business does or will do, so that you can focused on the appropriate target market. Prospective investors in your business will look closely at this purpose when they assess whether you have the strategic direction for future success. You also need to be clear about why you are going to this business in the first place, and what you want of it. Investors need to understand your motivation and your intentions, so that they can judge whether these match the plans that you set out for development of the business.

Making it Happen

Identify your customer
A better starting point is to define the purpose of your business in response to customer needs-making your business market-driven. define your business purpose in terms of your customers and what you percieve thier needs to be.

Make your purpose different
To succeed againts competitors, your business needs to offer something different. Built this differentiation into your purpose, so everything you do can be judged in terms of whether it supporsts the purpose or not. Potential investors want to see your your business unique selling proposition as this is the basis on which you will complete and on which customers will be attracted.

Write a mission statement
Your business mission is a statement of purpose that guides your activities. It is a summary of what you do. The mission provides the guiding direction for developing strategy , searching out opportunities and making resource allocation choices. It is built on your core values, so should easily understand by customers and financial backers. You can often established your mission in terms of the question "What business are we in?"

Decide what you want your business to be after couple of years
Ask yourself what opportunities and threats there might be, and summarise your vision into a single statement. Try to envisage this so you can start to move your business towards that point.