BUSINESS PLANS

People often believe that a business plan is for startups that need investments or for businesses that need a loan. However, while a Business Plan is especially useful for new companies, every company benefits from having them. Business Plans help prioritize your goals and develop a strategic course of action.

A Business Plan provides benefits beyond getting financing, dealing with vendors and suppliers, and familiarizing prospective employees with your business. It can be used as a modeling tool to look at a variety of scenarios, including opportunities, processes, strategies, solutions, costs, risks,  and resources. It also serves as a roadmap for the operation of your business. This helps you chronologically organize business-critical events so you don't get ahead of yourself in business activities that have conditions precedent that must be satisfied.

A written Business Plan provides two important benefits with regards to managing your business.

First, Business Plans help you plan for the future. By this, we mean that it identifies the essential events that must occur and actions that must be taken to run and operate the business. Thus it serves as a timetable that provides concrete goals and deadlines. 

Second, Business Plans identify and analyze the internal and external factors that might affect operations. Some of these factors are out of your control, including economic conditions, the weather, changes in technology, competitors, etc. It also includes issues unique to your business, such as staffing and hiring, management policies, estimated cash flow, etc. A written plan provides the mechanism to tie all these factors together and effectively manage them.

A written Business Plan also contains two important elements, the milestones of each which must be met in order for the business to stay on track:

• Your marketing strategy, which identifies your target audience and explains how you will position your product or service to reach that audience. Your specific advertising and promotional activities will be linked to sales targets.
• Your operational plans, which deal with how your business will conduct its day-to-day activities. The timing of these activities is crucial, since there is little point in running ads for a product that isn't available for sale. 

Ultimately, a Business Plan is like a flashlight that allows you to see in the dark. It is the key tool that provides transparency amongst all stakeholders! Can you imagine your team and you having to work in the dark?!

A relatively small amount spent now on a Business Plan could save you a lot in the future.

Get in touch for a no obligation discussion about your business goals, and let us help you plan your success.