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Archive for the ‘Business Plan’ Category

Proprietors, administrators and executives can take the time to plan for organizational needs by creating the technical documents that will secure organizational success. Most companies leaders know that it is best to start with the business plan; but don’t stop there! Using all of the resources available to create the most dynamic organization possible develops a strong foundation and nurtures a healthy future. Proper planning will allow a company to create and reach measurable goals while noting milestones along the way. Some of those all important documents are as follows:

Business Plan

In a world where “seven out of ten new employer firms last at least two years, and about half survive five years” [information published by sba.gov] an entrepreneur must have a solid business plan to keep site of measurable goals and objectives. When prepared correctly, a business plan functions as an organizational road map and ensures profits and working capital are rarely far from hand. And when prepared with care, taking the time to develop accurate data helps ensure funding for start up companies and expansion resources for existing companies.

Marketing Plan

Having a business plan and a new tri-color logo may be nice, but it does not exactly generate profits by sitting on an office shelf or on a secure website domain. Companies must work to ensure that buzz is created around the ideas have been worked so hard to establish as concrete product and service offerings. Having a realistic budget, strategy and expectations for a marketing and advertising presence within an organization is essential to growth.

Sales Plan

In additional to a marketing plan, a sales program should be put in place. Such a plan ensures that the dollars spent on marketing campaigns are generating the highest return on investment. This includes components like having professionals on the sales team and providing training and management support to assist them in their endeavors. The sales plan is like the cherry on top of the marketing plan sundae.

Department Plan

This can be a simple template outlining the departments that are required for a company to function at its highest level and the components needed to create such a physical department or a presence to ensure the roles for that department are fulfilled.

Culture Plan

Questions of morale, productivity and even standard operating procedures have their core in a company’s culture. Make sure that time is spent developing the organizational culture to produce an intended outcome. Starting with the company values, clearly outline exactly what is important within the company and how those items will be nurtured to grow along with the company and its team members.

Exit Plan

An exit plan allows organizational leaders to close the company doors when they decide and on their own terms; just as when the doors first opened. It gives proprietors control and piece on mind for an uncertain future. Should the inventory be sold by itself or with the company? Who will get the rights to the company name? What will happen to lists and database information? These should all be items that the owner and/or partners decide [before the decision has to be made].

Proper planning by company leaders starts with a business plan and moves forward from there. From the marketing plan to the exit plan, all planning documents are best put in place at the same time the business plan is developed. Such planning nurtures and secures organizational growth.

Online or offline, when you want to start a business you need a business plan. Writing a business plan helps when pursuing investment capital, but it also helps you set some clear goals. A business plan is a living document, so you can first create it as an outline and develop it later, as your business grows.

Executive Summary:

This is the most important section of your business plan. If you look for investors, make sure to write this part properly. The executive summary describes the company, the products and services and what unique opportunities you are offering. Remember: the executive summary creates the first impression of both you and your business. This is a business plan in miniature, no preface, no introduction.

Do not write a very long executive summary. Keep it at 3 pages at the very most. Focus on the opportunity and benefits and use concrete facts to explain your business concept. Don’t forget to include central details of your investment: how much money you need, what return you offer your investors.

Here is what your executive summary should demonstrate: a clear business concept and plan for success, a competent team, a specific market, significant advantages, a realistic summary of the financial projections and a great opportunity for the investors.

Mission and Vision Statements:

This part of the business plan you are going to use both online and offline, so it is good to write it carefully.

The mission and vision statements set the tone for your business. Your clients, potential business partners and investors learn from these statements what your company stands for and what you intend to achieve. Use powerful and meaningful words.

Make the difference:

The Vision defines your dream, a far-achievable objective: an ideal. Don’t fake it! If you don’t believe it, don’t write it!

The Mission defines what you intend to accomplish: challenging, but achievable. Don’t lie and don’t pretend to be something you are not!

Company Description:

This is the part of your plan that outlines your business information and concept. Explain who you are and what you do, where and when the company was formed, include a company history, current status and future goals. You are going to use the company description online as well, at the “about us” category. Your online clients are as demanding as the offline ones. They are curious and want to learn about your company.

Products and Services:

Now you have the chance to clearly describe your products and services while identifying their main features and benefits.

When describing products it might be useful to include pictures that help the reader get a better understanding of the size, shape, colour, etc. Don’t forget to include the technological details, patent protection and cost.

Services are not so easy to explain. Try to underline the key benefits they bring and what makes your service unique. Benefits are more important than features, so focus on them.

These are general aspects of a business and including them in a business plan will also help defining what public information you will include on your website. But a business plan should also include some “internal” aspects: industry analysis, market analysis and target market, marketing and sales, competitive analysis and so on.

How to write a business plan is among the very first decisions you, as a future business owner must make. Do you write it yourself, or give in to the temptation to take an easier path? By taking ownership of this first, most important step in building your business, you will gain far more than a crisp document to be read by others. You will develop a deep understanding of what it will take for your business to succeed. For this reason, it is essential that the business owner be the primary thought leader or sole author of the business plan. Outside help should be reserved for fine tuning, validation and in some cases to prepare financial projections.

Let it be YOUR Business Plan

As the founder and business owner you will be charting the course for the business. It will be important that the business plan be an extension of your personal vision for the company. For most entrepreneurs, the opportunity to call the shots and lead the way was an important part of why they wanted to get into business. Now is the time to start being a leader. Leaders develop their own plans and call the plays along the way. When it’s not your plan, you relegate yourself to performing as an operator. You will find yourself going back to the business plan someone else wrote to occasionally re-read the directions, or ignoring it altogether. Either way, the value of having a plan has been greatly diminished.

The Value is in the Process

The act of writing a business plan is one of forced discipline, problem solving and reconciling the results. When approached and completed in this manner the end product and the process itself will increase your self-confidence and assuredness about where your business is headed.

Starting with a simple business plan template, and there are lots of them available, force yourself to think through all the critical aspects of the business. This will be an iterative process that you repeat, fine tune and re-write. As you develop each section of your business plan, your thoughts about the other sections will evolve-even those that you’ve already written. You go back, edit and in the end, you make it all work together. That’s the idea. You are developing an understanding of the relationships between every aspect of your business.

To underscore the importance of writing your own business plan, take this little exercise. Read the paragraph below as quickly as you can. Then stop, take a breath and move on to the next one.

Who will my customers be? What problem will I solve for them? How much are they willing to pay to have this problem solved? What are my costs associated with each sale? Why will customers choose to buy from my business? How will I find customers? Who will sell, produce, and deliver? Which markets will I go after first? Why? How much will it cost to operate the business each month? What will my break even point be? How fast can I get there? How much startup capital will I need? How will I succeed?

Okay, slow down now and consider this: The most important question isn’t listed. The most important question is, “How are these factors interrelated?”

Imagine that today someone handed you the answers to all of the questions from our fast-read drill above. It would certainly save you a lot of time. Better still, these wouldn’t be just any answers, but they would be the right answers from a solid business plan for a business that had already been proven to be successful, a business just like the one you’re planning to start. You could read and re-read the answers many times over, practically memorizing them. You would know that they were the right answers. Yet, doing so will not help you develop an understanding of how the answers are interconnected.

If you change the way you plan to find customers, how will that impact your monthly operating costs? If customers are only willing to pay 80% of your planned price, what will that do to your break even point? How will the answers to these two questions impact how much capital you need to start the business? This example looks at just two questions. Realistically, the answer to each question is highly dependent on the answers to several of the other questions. In the end they must all work together and you must understand how they all work together.

If you develop your own business plan, section by section, thinking through all of the answers to the critical questions, you will also develop an intuitive sense of how they work together. It will require a lot of thinking and rethinking of your ideas and it will take time. This is not meant to be a fast drill. In the end, it will be the difference between memorizing the lines and actually being the character. Small business ownership is not the place to be reciting someone else’s lines. You are the character. Write your own lines. Be the leader.

When to Bend the Guidelines

There are some times to reach outside for help. For example, perhaps you would say, “I’m not a numbers person; I don’t think I can do the financial projections.”

First, plan to become more of a numbers person because business ownership is about numbers. Sales, expenses and profits are the three that are most important. Even so, many business operators who have a good feel for the numbers need assistance with spreadsheets and financial statements. It is okay to get outside help preparing your financials, just be sure that you understand them when they are complete. If you are going to pay someone to prepare them, be sure that they also save time to go over them with you from top to bottom. Ultimately they are your numbers.

Others might say, “I have great ideas, but I’m not a great writer.” It’s understood that there can be a lot riding on someone else reading the final product of your business plan-such as a loan or an investment decision. For that reason, if you are not a strong writer you should start by going through the process of organizing, writing and rewriting your own business plan as best you can. Force yourself to go through all of the steps of writing, rethinking and rewriting as your ideas evolve. Then, have someone else take your finished draft and craft the final polished document. What is important is that the final document must accurately reflect your concepts, ideas and thought process, not the editors.

What if I Just Can’t Do It?

Finally, some would say, “I want to start my own business. I am a strong operator, but honestly, I don’t think I could write a business plan myself. What do you suggest?” Simple: Buy a franchise! They are perfect for people who are strong operators where someone else provides the strategic plan, the systems and some guidance. This might be the best ownership model for you. That’s a topic for another day.

People plan more for a vacation than they do to start a business. When you are looking to do your business plan, remember that the most important part of a business plan is the homework you need to do before you write it. That consists of researching, analyzing, and evaluating the business opportunity you’d like to pursue. Doing your homework will unveil the potential weaknesses and problem areas of your business idea. You need to do this before you hit it full force. The worst possible event is for you to waste your time and money on an idea that just won’t fly.

A business plan is not a guarantee of success, but you better believe it that not having one increases your chances of failing. Why? Because how can you get where you want to go if you don’t know where you’re going?

Everyone has heard that 20 percent of all new businesses will be around in 5 years. You definitely don’t want to be in the 80 percent that didn’t make it. Most businesses don’t have a business plan yet they know that it’s a good idea to have one. It’s like knowing eating vegetables is good for you but you don’t do it.

What a business plan does for you is it evaluates all the particulars of starting a company. It will reveal how much you can potentially make and on paper go through worst and best case scenarios. It’s crazy but most people plan more for a vacation than for a start-up opportunity! For example, it’s a huge mistake to quit your day job before you do a business plan to really see how feasible your business idea is at making you money.

It’s not that hard to do a business plan and if you use Business Plan software it can be pretty easy. You can go to our “In Business University” page and purchase software there. A business plan is a document that is about 40 to 50 pages long. It outlines your intentions and plans for running your business. As your company grows, it will serve as a guidebook and a reference manual for your management team to see if you are on track.

You will be sharing your business plan with many different audiences. Just hold back the confidential information like financial, new technology or client data when you have to share it. The common parts that are less-sensitive you will share like personnel, industry analyses, existing products, and services, and other company information that would normally appear in your marketing material.

What a business plan does is it summarizes the goals and purpose of your company and how you intend to reach those goals. It has sections on what you intend on selling, your industry, your competition, your place against the competition, marketing strategy, your staff, your business operations, equipment, and your financial resources and projections.

If you are looking to get financing, you will definitely need a sound business plan but here is a list of other people who would need to see it:

-Management or board of directors to understand the future direction of the company.
-Strategic partners or joint venture participants who are evaluating whether your overall direction is in alignment with theirs.

-Employees to understand the direction of the company and long-term opportunities for themselves. Granted you should only show them a few sections and not sensitive information.

First – stop thinking like a business owner. I know, you might think this is odd. However, the reason most business owners don’t write a business plan is because they are too close to their challenges and can’t decide what they need to do. Stepping out of character will help you see the big picture and the little details so you can focus on what to do.

Since this was written during championship football season, I want you to assume the role of a winning college or professional sports coach. It doesn’t matter if you are a woman or a man for this job. The goal will be the same. You will want to prepare your team to win the championship game by as many points as possible. If you have trouble with football, pick any team sport and the concept will work. The idea is to get into the character of a winning coach to help you create a plan.

Think like 60 Minutes is all You Have

A football game is divided up like a business year. There are four quarters and two minute warnings you must plan for. You will need plays and actions for kicking things off, receiving special team opportunities and think offense and defense to win.

Understand You and Your Opponent

Winning coaches invest time to research opponents and you need to determine both your strengths and weaknesses. If you don’t take time for this, you will get clobbered by the other teams. Use this research and analysis to formulate your complete game strategies and special plays.

Plan For Special Plays

Every team will need specials plays to kick off, receive, punt, and defend the red zone and two minute warning. These are special opportunities you have in the year from new equipment, vendor specials, trade shows or open houses you can plan for.

The Offensive Game Plays

You will need a list of offensive running and passing plays to execute during the game. These are easy to think about and you must plan for them.

Action plans to start a new business relationship and move forward. Actions to build a stronger customer base. Actions to generate referrals for new clients from existing ones. Open house and networking actions you will execute for new business.
The Defensive Plays

You will need a list of defensive plays that protect your accounts and seize opportunities. These could include a blitz or a pass rush that capitalizes on an opportunity.

Action plans that develop satisfied clients and builds strong relationships. Surveys that will help determine if you have new opportunities or lost business. Monitor and track competitive actions that may impact your current business. If you can, have contingency plans for injuries, bad calls and penalties in the game.

I hope you see the advantage of planning from a different perspective to make your sales plan fun and much easier to write. Your business plan doesn’t have to be 20 pages long. You need a single sheet that covers the actions you will take to win the game in your business. When you finish writing your business plan, it should be on a 12 month calendar with goals and objectives for each quarter.

A complete game plan makes it easier to adjust actions during the game and in your case, the business year so you can motivate your team throughout the year. If you need help with your plan, I suggest you take time to watch a championship game. Think of it as research. You will be done with your sales plan sooner than you think and it will be fun.

There are many excellent businesses which can provide a very good living for smart business owners and entrepreneurs, but given the right location a hotel business can be one of the best.

Before swinging the doors of the hotel open, however, it is important to sit down and work out a solid and professional hotel business plan.

Using Your Hotel Business To Provide A Guideline For Success

Having such a hotel business plan in place can provide an important guideline for the success of the business, as well as providing much needed information to potential lenders, investors and business partners.

In fact, the hotel business plan is one of the first documents many of these would be investors will want to see.

Savvy investors will want to carefully review the information contained in the hotel business plan and use it to make an informed decision about the prospects of the business.

Elements To Include In Your Business Plan

There are a number of elements any well written hotel business plan must contain, including the name of the business, the location of the new business, how many employees the business plans to hire and the timeline for building, stocking and opening the business.

Detailing What Is Going On In Your Local Market

In addition there are a number of elements that will be unique to the hotel business plan, including information on local attractions that draw visitors to a particular area.

In order for a hotel business to succeed, it is important that the area in which it operates be growing and thriving, and that there be sufficient business and leisure travel to justify the addition of more hotel rooms.

Thus it is important that the hotel business plan contain information on the number of existing hotels in the area, including as much information on vacancy rates as possible.

It is important as well for the hotel business plan to include information on what will make the new property different, and how it will successfully compete in a crowded marketplace.

Listing Your Plan To Attract And Keep Good Employees

It is also important for the hotel business plan to include information on how the owners of the business plan to attract and retain qualified hotel staff.

The turnover rates for maids, housekeepers and front desk personnel at hotels is notoriously high, and potential investors will want to see that the business owner has considered this problem and thoroughly addressed it.

It is important for the hotel business plan to include at least a few paragraphs relating to the attraction and retention of qualified hotel staff members.