Designing Your Offer and Business Model

Turn your research into a clear offer and a practical way of delivering it.

Part 3 of 10 | Starting a Small Business in The Gambia

Learning goals Define what customers receive, map the work behind a sale and estimate a realistic delivery capacity. Your output is a one-page business model with a clearly bounded starter offer.

Before you begin Allow 90 minutes. Use your customer research and a blank sheet. This lesson concerns operating decisions, not legal permission to trade. You will identify registration and approval questions in Part 4 before planning a live launch.

Specify the offer so both sides understand it An offer explains the item or service, who it helps, what is included, what is excluded and when it will be delivered. State the unit of sale. For example, a price per simple trouser hem is different from a price for altering an entire outfit. Ambiguous units make comparisons and cost calculations unreliable.

Write the customer's desired result in everyday language, then list the work needed to produce it. If a customer expects collection, inspection and a correction after fitting, those tasks consume time even when the advert mentions only sewing. Explain conditions before accepting work. An exclusion should be visible and understandable rather than hidden in small print.

Connect customers to operations Draw a route from discovery to enquiry, quotation, agreement, payment, delivery and follow-up. At each stage ask what information is needed and who is responsible. A customer may discover you through a neighbour but prefer to confirm an order by phone. Choose a route you can maintain consistently with the time and tools available.

For each step, identify a resource: materials, workspace, transport, a working phone, skill or a supplier. Then identify a dependency outside your control. If a supplier is late, can you still keep the delivery promise? A business model becomes realistic when it connects the customer promise to the activities and resources needed to keep it.

Understand how money enters and leaves Revenue is the value earned from sales. Costs are the resources consumed to provide the work and keep the business operating. Receiving money does not automatically mean you have made a profit; some of it may be needed for materials, rent or other obligations. A customer deposit also carries an obligation to deliver or handle cancellation according to agreed terms and applicable rules.

For now, list your expected sales units and cost categories without pretending you already know every amount. Separate buying a tool from buying materials for one job. Record who pays delivery, whether payment is due before or after completion and whether customer credit is being offered. Parts 5 to 7 turn these choices into budgets, prices and records.

Calculate capacity before making promises Awa has 15 hours each week for business work. She sets aside five hours for enquiries, purchasing, collection and records. Ten hours remain for sewing. If a simple alteration takes 30 minutes, the theoretical maximum is 20 jobs. That maximum leaves no room for errors, urgent interruptions or unusually difficult garments.

She sets an initial planning limit of 15 simple jobs per week so she can learn her actual timings. This is a case-study decision, not an industry standard. She inspects each garment before promising a date. A job beyond her skill is declined or referred with the customer's agreement. Accepting everything can damage quality and delay customers who were promised earlier delivery.

Make partnerships explicit If you share a machine, workspace or customer relationship, agree access, costs, care and what happens when the arrangement ends. An informal understanding can fail when demand grows or equipment breaks. Write practical responsibilities down and obtain appropriate advice for binding agreements. Do not assume a friend providing a tool automatically becomes an owner of the business.

Keep a list of assumptions beside the model. Examples include 15 jobs each week, access to the machine on particular days and customers collecting on time. Assign a check to each assumption. A short model that can be updated is more useful at this stage than a long plan filled with confident but unsupported forecasts.

Guided exercise 1. Write your starter offer in four sentences covering customer, result, unit of sale and main exclusions. Ask a partner to name what they would expect to receive.

2. Draw the seven stages from discovery to follow-up. Add the information and resource required at every stage, including work that customers do not see.

3. Calculate weekly delivery hours after administration and travel. Divide by a realistic time per job, then choose a lower initial capacity with room for disruption.

4. List revenue sources, materials, recurring costs and startup purchases. Mark each amount known, estimated or still to investigate. Name two dependencies and possible backups.

5. Combine the offer, workflow, capacity, money categories and assumptions on one page. Revise the collection or delivery promise if the numbers do not fit.

Knowledge check 1. Why must the unit of sale be clear?

2. How many theoretical half-hour jobs fit into ten delivery hours?

3. Why might the business accept fewer jobs than that maximum?

Answer guide 1. Customers and the owner need a shared basis for the scope, quotation, cost and delivery commitment.

2. Twenty jobs: ten hours divided by half an hour per job.

3. Administration, difficult work, delays and corrections create variation. A reserve of time protects the promise and quality.

Completion standard Produce a one-page model containing a specific offer, complete workflow, capacity calculation, cost categories and two dependency plans. Correctly answer all three questions. Bring the model to the registration lesson so you can describe your actual activity rather than asking officials about an undefined business.

Sources and verification notes

Original practical instruction and invented examples. This lesson does not state specific legal requirements or current platform features. Verify any real business requirements through the authorities identified in Part 4.