Guide To Setting Up Your Business

So, you’ve created your business plan, you pitched your ideas to a team of hot-shot investors. They scrutinized your budgets hard and then mulled over the offer that you had on the table. Eventually, it was agreed that your business idea had legs, and you had the drive, determination, experience, and knowledge to take it out on the road of success. 

But what next? You will suddenly find that you have a powerpoint full of ideas that you need to make into reality. If you didn’t feel daunted going up against a team of investors that wanted to pull apart your idea, you may find that getting your hands on your startup cash and having to make a start on getting your business off the ground can be a tad scary. So what are the next steps that you need to make?

Finding Your Business Premises

Your first mission will be to find a suitable venue for you to run your business out of. There are many different factors that you will need to keep in mind when it comes to finding the right place for you. Firstly, you should find out how much you have budgeted for your rent, rates, and any legal fees and deposits that you will need. 

Think about all of the things that your business needs. If you are having customers visiting, are they going to be able to find you easily? What is the parking and public transport situation like? If you are a retailer, what is the footfall like? Are you near to competitors? What else is in the vicinity that may impact trade? 

Make sure that with any potential units that you find, you try and learn as much about the local area as possible. Find out if there are any plans to open any new major businesses, or carry out any large infrastructure changes in the area. Major developments could be a costly inconvenience for your business, and if you know about them before you make a decision, you may still be able to go elsewhere instead.  

When it comes to commercial properties, the wheels can often move quite slowly. Once you found somewhere that suits all of your needs, you will be able to put an offer in to lease the property. Once the landlord is in agreement, then you will need to go through various phases while contracts are drawn up and heads of terms are set in place. You may find that the agreement is with the solicitors for a very long time, and this can be frustrating. While you are waiting for the legal wrangling, be sure you are setting the ball rolling on other elements of your business. 

Setting Up Your Premises 

Once you have the keys you can start working on making the premises fit for your business. If you are a retailer, think about having the assistance of a designer who is used to creating retail floor plans. They will understand the routes that your customers will want to take around the store and how best to layout the fixtures and fittings too. 

If you are opening an office, have a look at Open Office Floor Plan: 6 Pros And 6 Cons to Consider. You will want to have an atmosphere where it is easy to get as much work done as possible. There are practicalities to a layout where everyone is working in one room. However, if you have privacy concerns or will be seeing clients, then you may need to have a closed office. 

Hire a team of contractors to do the work for you. You may think that it is a good idea to do the work yourself to try and save money. However, you will not be able to create the most professional finish, and you may end up having to call in the professionals to fix all of your mistakes. 

Having contractors getting to work on your premises will mean that you are now free to set up recruitment and get any licensing and regulatory concerns ironed out. 

Recruiting Your Team

You will want the best team of staff that you can get. When you are starting out though, money may well be tight and you might not be able to offer the salary ranges that you would like. You will need to make sure that all of your staff are paid at least the minimum wage for the area. However, you may want to consider adding an incentive to the remuneration package. 

Offering your new team the potential to earn a bonus if the business exceeds its targets will mean that you will be more likely to have a motivated team who are really pushing themselves to succeed. You will be more profitable and make more money if they are pushing harder. But if they fail to make the targets, then you won’t be risking going out of pocket on your staffing costs. 

Use a recruitment company that specializes in your business niche. They will be able to collect in all of the applications and go through them to pick out the most relevant applicants. You could have the recruitment company pre-screen and arrange the interviews for you. 

Work out what you plan on asking them in the interview. You may want to find a set of questions online that will offer you what you need. You could add to these by asking questions about any skills or experiences that are particularly relevant to the job on offer. 

As your business is new, they may not know too much so it is worth giving them as much information ahead of the interview as possible so that they can think about any questions they may need to ask you. 

Hold your interviews in a professional setting, and if possible, have someone to assist you in the interview and provide you with a second opinion. 

Try and offer as much feedback as possible after the interviews and promptly inform candidates if they have the job or not so that they are not left hanging around. This will also ensure that the people you would like to employ don’t get offered alternative employment in the meantime.

Creating Policies And Procedures

When it comes to managing a business and a team of staff, you will need to implement a series of policies and procedures. These will be in place to protect both the company and the employees. 

The policies and procedures will need to cover all aspects of working for your company. There should be a human resources policy will incorporate many vital areas such as equal rights policies. You need to be sure that there is no chance that you are discriminating based on gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, age, or anything else. You should have a transparent policy that is available for your staff to see. 

You should have a holiday, sickness, and a lateness policy. Then you will also need a disciplinary and grievance policy so that you can manage any employments that may arise.

You should then set up a health and safety policy. This will determine the measures that you have in place and the frequency of all inspections of safety equipment such as fire alarms and extinguishers. It should set out how and when risk assessments are to be carried out. It will also cover the companies obligations towards the employees in terms of health and safety training. 

Other policies and procedures that you should get drawn up should be surrounding specific aspects of the job. These will ensure that the team know what is expected of them and how they will do their jobs. 

If you are unsure about the type of wording that you should be using, it may be worth speaking with  HR consultancy firm and they will be able to help you to draw some up for your company. 

Getting Ready For Trade

Once you have the venue and the team things will start to move far quicker. You should start training your team as soon as possible, with health and safety training being your number one priority. 

If you are providing goods or services, then you will need to set out your customer service expectations as well as providing training around products and services. Getting your team up to speed now will mean that you don’t have to it once you start. The first few days will probably be very hectic with lots going on for you. Having your team in place and knowing what they need to be doing is going to be vital for your initial success. 

Think about what you will do to launch the company. You may want to invite the local press and neighbouring businesses. You could invite the people who will be your customers as it will be a great chance to build relationships with them. Once you open your doors for the first time, remember to enjoy the moment.