The Business Plan, Strategic Planning and their relationship. Over the last 40 years I have repeatedly been asked what is the value or point of a written Business Plan ? My answer has remained constant. It is the primary tool that all successful businesses use to maximize the return on their investment, secure employment, protect their assets and drive the business forward. So over the coming weeks I thought I would share a comprehensive answer by publishing, a FREE self-help guide, to constructing a Business Plan that anyone can follow. This is the template I have successfully used for start-ups

The Strategic Plan. Strategic goals are the fundamental, identifiable, reasons for the business existing. The difficulty for many people is in clarifying the key or vital goals without allowing vague notions such as: “I want to make a lot of money“, or “I want to leave the business for future generations”, or ”I want to run my own bakery” to replace clarity. I would urge you to simplify the process to having no more than three very clear goals for your business. Successful owners that I know re-consider these goals annually and revise them as life, the economy and their

Stage 1: Does your business idea suck or fly ? You have this wonderful idea for a new business. Whether it is making, promoting or distributing this fantastic and new product or service the same 3 ground rules always apply. YOU think your idea is the answer to other people’s needs BUT does your chosen market agree ? WHO else is offering a solution to this notional need ? HOW does your idea differ or add value to the existing solutions There is no benefit to you in making a product or designing a service that other people do not

Stage 2: Having hopes, dreams and aspirations is fantastic, commendable and significant. Equally essential are the facts about your proposed customers. As you begin to develop your product or service and before you risk greater sums of money bringing this to the market it is vital that you identify where your potential customers are located. It seems so logical and yet each year thousands of people launch businesses and locate them in the wrong place. Budding entrepreneurs find themselves taking retail premises at the wrong end of town or where there is poor parking because they have not researched the

You have this wonderful idea for a business and you have established there is a market need for your idea, however before you decide to invest your life’s savings and inflict yourself on the unsuspecting public. 3 words of cautionary advice ! Skills License Name From Australia to the UK I have found so many business owners in deep financial problems, some haven’t acquired the appropriate license to carry out their chosen trade. Others have begun business in the wrong trading entity and only realized when the tax authorities have slapped a huge fine on them. Still more have been

Confused ? Design is not a solution, it is a step in the process of selling. Design is a prediction concerned with how things ought to be, it aims to change an existing situation into a preferred one. It plays a vital role not simply in establishing how a product may look, but how it may perform to it’s desired function. As much scrutiny and rigour apply to the design of a service as to it’s efficiency and profitability. This is not a ‘big business’ concept. It has real consequences for the inexperienced sole trader or fast growing SME. Product

Business Plan –Stage 5 – Preparation for trading It never ceases to amaze how often start-ups and existing businesses alike find themselves in a legal or financial wrangle because the owners have not chosen the appropriate legal structure for their business. If the structure is wrong, then insurance and licences are often found to be void. This is a common and costly mistake. Many business failures start with this issue, when owners find they cannot get paid for work done or cannot expand their financing to take advantage of a market opportunity. Banks, Courts and insurance companies have little compassion

Marketing makes your kite stand out from the crowd ! Marketing is fundamentally about the strategy of exciting interest in your product, service or company. Sales, is better thought of as thetactics you employ to achieve actual orders. It follows that without a clear strategy in place, gaining good margin sales will be increasingly difficult, time consuming and unnecessarily costly. This article and the one following will look at Marketing; off-line this week and on-line next week. An examination of sales techniques will follow. A word of caution; please do not be too swayed by press articles announcing the death of

The reasons for constructing a thorough Business Plan for any commercial venture are to increase efficiencies and profits whilst reducing stress and losses. Continuing last week’s article about the significance and function of marketing for all businesses, and it’s associated though different role from sales; this article will give an oversight of the on-line opportunities. Marketing is fundamentally about the strategy of exciting interest in your product, service or company.Sales, is better thought of as the tactics you employ to achieve actual orders. It follows that without a clear strategy in place, gaining good margin sales will be increasingly difficult, time

A great many Business Plans fail to attract financial support from bankers, investors and potential customers because the owners have not truly understood the function as well as the concept of selling. Sales is not a process where one party tells another lots of ‘stuff’ about their product, service and company. Professional selling is far more a process of intense listening followed by persuasive dialogue that directs the prospect to establish the benefits they will reap from purchasing your products or services. What the guru of selling Alfred Tack described as the “persuasive communication against resistance.” One of the most