Page 4 - wedohelpforbusinessstartups1

• How long has this business been around?

• How many employees do they have?

• How many locations do they have?

• Are they national or strictly local?

• How are they advertising?

• How many customers do they get in a day, week, or month?

• If selling a product, how do they manufacture? What are their manufacturing costs?

• If selling a service, what kind of equipment do they have? What are the costs of acquisition and maintenance?

Getting exact answers to these questions is probably going to be impossible but getting in the ballpark is good enough to start.

I've even found that one of the best strategies was simply calling competitors and asking.

When we were still thinking about what business to start, my partner randomly met the guy who runs one of the local junk haul

franchises. It was just a normal Tuesday, and the business owner said they had 17 junk hauls that day. Another company said

on their busiest days, they'd get 50 phone calls. We called another few company and figured out how busy they are on an

average day, roughly how many employees they had, and a basic pricing structure. That was enough to get us going.