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How To Assess A Business Opportunity - An Ingredient Often Missed

By: Virginia Reynolds

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No doubt as in your online world, business opportunity after business opportunity stream into my inbox every day and pop up or under sites I am visiting. As you might assume, they all promise the fulfillment of our financial dreams. You are probably like me, I always like to review the latest hot business opportunity just to make sure that I am not missing out on the next big thing.

Now, back in my offline days I learned a valuable lesson from John, who at the time headed our local Port corporation. This is a for-profit government body responsible for building and maintaining infrastructure for our local river port. Mundane things like channel dredging, buoys, lights, wharves and pilotage comprises its activities and the corporation has to make a profit from these activities and pay a dividend to our provincial government, the only shareholder. This would be as far removed from the typical internet business opportunity as Mercury is from Pluto (poor Pluto, it has been downgraded from being a planet to a hunk of rock - but I digress ...).

John had a problem though. That problem had to do with choice. With just so many hours in the day, and with funds limited by preset budget constraints, he and his management team had to determine what had to be done, by when and with how much, before they would consider the next priority. Now does this have a familiar ring to you? Are you not having to determine what business opportunity you will sign up for, how much it will cost in dollars and time, and what priority you determine to do this above other things you have to do?

So John came across a Harvard Business Review study on a concept called the "Value Proposition". It gave him a clear path to follow to determine whether, for example, River Buoy No I4 should be upgraded with weather resistant long-life bulbs or whether Wharf No 2 needed refurbishment of its timber decking. I wont bamboozle you here with all the management jargon and equations.

Translated for us business opportunity seekers it means simply:

What more will I get out of a product than what I need to put in, in terms of dollars and time and the opportunity cost in foregoing activity in other areas.

Now on reading this you may jump up and retort - "Hey, Virginia, that's common sense - I intuitively do this all the time!"

But do you really do this? I thought I did until I found myself so snowed under hopping from business opportunity to business opportunity that I had to take drastic action. It was simple really. I emailed the principals of each business opportunity and asked if they could furnish me in a clear, non-salesy, fashion their value-proposition such that my dry, humorless accountant would bother to read and understand.

Well, for those who did not bother to acknowledge my request I discarded like an old boot I hooked when fishing from Wharf No 2. For those that responded with a "huh, what do you mean?" then I would explain, and if they then failed to respond I gently placed them out of my "to do" bucket as I would an undersized fish. If I received a reply that made sense and opened my eyes to something that I had not noticed before, well I would hang on to that business, work it, get excited by it, and reel it in it as if I had caught a giant tuna!

So apply this "value-proposition" test to those business opportunities you are looking at. It may save you much time, dollars and angst.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

Virginia Reynolds is a retired CPA and in her offline career had to struggle to break down complicated jargon into simple terms. She has found one product that not only has a clear value proposition, it over-delivers on it. www.itsmysite.com/ezyhelp

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