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Archive for July, 2011

Writing a Working Business Plan

By Trina Newby

Many women are so confused by the words - "Business Plan". What is it? Who do I show it to? Do I really need it? What is it really going to do for me?

A business plan is a written blueprint for your business. It describes a summary of what your business is about and its' goals. It also outlines how your business will function. The term "business plan" was first developed by bankers who wanted a detailed report of how a business would result in profits before they would make a decision on lending money. Today, no business banker will even entertain a business loan application without a business plan.

In a nutshell, the answer is yes, you really do need a business plan if you really want to build a solid foundation under your home-based business.

I guess the reason so many women procrastinate in doing a business plan is because they think they have to come up with some imaginary figures and statistics about their business which is of course very scary for anyone. This type of plan is known as an Executive Business Plan. This plan is shown to banks, SBA and other lenders who you may apply to for a substantial loan. Usually, this type of business plan must show a 3-5 year projection of how much money your business would make if they should lend you a specific sum of money. Although you will need this type of business plan should you wish to expand your business, the most important thing for you to know now is where you will be in the next 3,6,9 and 12 months. One of the best form of business plans to start out with is the "Working Business Plan". This plan answers the 5 "W's" - Who, What, Where, When and Why.

There is no pre-required length that a Working Business Plan should be. Just remember that you aren't writing to impress, you are writing to address the important issues of starting your business. This plan is just for your planning purposes and can be expanded later on into a full executive plan. The following outline will help you in processing your thoughts and writing your Working Business Plan.

1. Mission Statement - What is the goal of your business? What purpose does it serve?

2. Objective - What will the outcome be for your business as a result of your mission. (Ex: K.G. enterprises will gross over ,000 it's first year with a 5% error margin on its documents).

3. Management - Who will run the business and what qualifications does the person have. What additional skills or resources are needed? What are the names of others that might be able to serve as mentors or help you in grooming your business for success?

4. Service/Product - What products or services are being offered? How will they be produced? If you are selling a product, how much of the product will you need in stock? Do you have the start-up capital needed to purchase the produce? If no, how will you raise the capital needed?

5. Customers - Who are your customers? What area are they in? Is this a service or product they will want to buy? Do a typical profile of a repeat customer. 6. Competition - Who are your competitors? Where are they located? What are their prices? What services or products do they sell? How could you do better?

7. Marketing - How will you market your business? How much money will you need to market your business? How is your competition marketing their business? Do you need business cards, brochure, stationery, fliers etc.?

8. Office Set-up - What are your daily office procedures, what will you do each day that will result in the sale of your service or product? What bookkeeping system will you use and how often will you input your information in the system? Do you need a bookkeeper? What supplies do you need? What type of furniture do you need? What office equipment will you need? Where will your office be?

9. Finances - HOW MUCH MONEY WILL YOU NEED FOR THE FOLLOWING?

$ Your Income

$ Advertising/Promotion

$ Bank Fees

$ Business Insurance

$ Business Lease/Rent

$ Internet (include website, hosting etc.)

$ Supplies

$ Postage

$ Printing

$ Telephone

$ Training

$ Utilities

$ Marketing/Advertising

$ Equipment

$ Furniture

10. Networking - Who needs to know about your new venture and why? What contacts do you need to have? Why do you need to know them? What can they help you with?

Contact Management

Establish a good contact management system for yourself. Today, keeping a list of contacts on paper is not efficient. Good contact management software will be needed. If you currently use MS Office, you should have MS Outlook already installed and it will serve the purpose nicely. Other popular contact management software are ACT and Goldmine. Regardless of what contact system you have you must be willing to update your system at least twice per week.

Evaluate how you will manage you contact system. Make sure to schedule this in your planner or palm.

Establish a good contact management system for yourself. Today, keeping a list of contacts on paper is not efficient. Good contact management software will be needed. If you currently use MS Office, you should have MS Outlook already installed and it will serve the purpose nicely. Other popular contact management software are ACT and Goldmine. Regardless of what contact system you have you must be willing to update your system at least twice per week. Evaluate how you will manage you contact system. Make sure to schedule this in your planner or palm.

11. Sales - The number of clients you service or products you sale will give you a true picture as to whether or not you are having success with your business. But first, you must have a measurable sales goal in achieving this success. Start by evaluating where you want to be in sales for the first 3 months, 6, months, 9 months or one year. By doing this you will be able to re-evaluate your business plan every three months and determine if you need to improve in marketing etc.

12. Starting Date - Set a starting date for when you want to begin your business or put into place this working business plan. Make sure you have printed material available for all services or products offered. Also evaluate and follow-up with yourself daily for the first month to ensure that you are following your own plan. After 30 days, follow-up on a weekly basis and then monthly from that point on.

13. Remember, no plan will work unless you are willing to put it into action!

About the Author:

Trina Newby is President and Founder of Women About Biz, a powerful membership-based network for Businesswomen. Let Women About Biz show you how to develop a working business plan and assist you growing your business.

Starting a business, whether big or small, is all about direction and planning.  Developing your business plan ought to be the first thing you do when you decide to start an online businessâ€or any business for that matter.

The plan lays the foundation and guides everything else that will follow. This is because, in order to get anywhere with your business, you have to know what you want from the business and how to achieve it.

That is why setting your goals is usually the first step towards getting where you want with your business. Remote Control Extender . Every entrepreneur should have their goals in mind when starting a business, and even established business owners would do well to regularly revisit their goals so as to stay focused on their purpose.

The goalsâ€or objectivesâ€are a part of what is generally referred to as the business plan.

The plan defines the business, its goals, whom it will cater for, as well as what and what activities need to performed at clearly stated times in the life of the business. 

This step will set your home business on the path to success. It surely shows you as organized, responsible and committed to what you have set out to do.

And should you need additional funding from external sources (including even close friends and family members) your business plan impresses it on onlookers that you aren't going to throw away the funds.

But to get the best out of your business plan, you have to do it right. Internet Promotion . This naturally begs the question: What exactly is a business plan? And what goes into it?

To begin with, any business plan must serve as a guideline and as an outline of goals that need to be executed for the success of the business.

It is a document that allows you and any observer to easily see the direction of your home business, and the processes through which things are done. A plan also helps you to understand at any point in time the progress of the business and its future.

Now this may sound a bit too official. But just bear in mind that the mere fact that you are now working from home does not remove the need to imbibe several of the tried and tested strategies that help medium and large-scale businesses to succeed.

Second only to inadequate capital, the absence of any clear plan for their businesses has been identified as a major cause of the high failure rate among home business ownersâ€less than 30% of those surveyed admit to having developed any realistic business plan for their business at the outset.

Having a plan includes setting and assigning responsibilities for the objectives you want to achieve, as well as setting the target dates for achieving them. If your home business has grown to an extent when you cannot possibly perform all tasks, assign a person to take charge of each action, but you should be the one to determine when that action should be completed.

It is also important that you follow through on your plans and assigned duties. Otherwise you would've wasted your time planning! Build some sort of checkpoints into your schedules to help you monitor your progress on a regular basis.

Having a clear plan to guide you as you run your home business is the surest way to stay focused on your business goals. Download Youtube . It also increases efficiency by keeping you away from non-essential tasks that rob you of your time and money.

As an Online Marketing Business Builder being able to attract daily targeted leads to your business is the key to your Online or MLM Success. How would you like to attract 50-100 leads to your business daily? 

Learning these Marketing Skills will help you build your MLM or Online business. You can visit my Blog: sandraessex.com and this Success Website: yourmakemoneyonline.info to find out more complete information on Lead Generation Training.

Your business day has just begun and you quickly whip out your clearly written plans. Pardon? Did you say you don't have a written business plan? Then join the club, 'Business Owners Without Plans'. The main problem this club faces is that the majority of it members' businesses are likely to fail. Business failure rate is high and a crucial reason for this is lack of planning.

If you belong to this group and I did once, you're probably an entrepreneur or a creative person. The idea of planning feels boring to you, seems unnecessary and involves a lot of detail. And you'd rather be doing other more interesting things. Your way of working is probably a lot more spontaneous, exciting and in the flow so you don't want to be restricted with plans. However, without plans you can to easily end up very unfocused, not achieving the results you desire and ultimately face the failure of your business.

So, what's your reason for not having business plans? Besides the usual reasons, like not having sufficient time to plan, not knowing how to do it or where to begin, perhaps you think that planning doesn't fit in with your entrepreneurial and creative spirit. After all, this is who you are and you don't want to lose this. Now fear begins to surface; fear that you many need to change personally or fear of failure. While plans stay in your head, it's not so frightening and real. Putting them in writing, brings them closer to fruition and although you may say this is what you want, is it really if you're not willing to commit them to paper. Planning your business takes it from being a hobby to a fully-fledged business. Although a lot of people would say that they operate their business as a business, in reality most operate them as hobbies and don’t take them seriously. Then they wonder why they're not being very successful and getting results.

I feel one of the problems for creative and entrepreneurial people is that when they consider business plans the picture that spring to mind is of hours pouring over enormous pages of details. That's enough to turn them straight off. However, it doesn't need to be that way. There is a way to develop plans for your business, and to be creative and entrepreneurial at the same time. These informal business plans are ones that you'll use yourself. If you need a business plan for outsiders, such as your bank or investors then this approach might not be for you. It could however be a good process to get your formal business plan started.

Instead of thinking that you need to commit hours to working on your business plans, I invite you to start with just five minutes. Now, without any thought of the appropriate way to do it, just write down the things that first come into your head for your business. Simply capture any goals, strategies, problems, your current situation and positioning. Writing down your plans, clarifies, organises and prioritises them, and clears vital space in your head.

The next step is to tap into your strengths as an entrepreneur or creative person. You're probably fantastic at coming up with ideas and solutions, and may well be intuitive. So, you'll tap into all of these using the power of questions. You'll use questions to come up with answers and solutions that you'll put into your business plan. Your business plan need only be a straightforward review of your present situation, your strategies, resources and goals. Nothing complicated or too detailed.

Here are some questions to obtain you started:

What is the current business situation?

What goals do you have for your business?

What problems and challenges is your business currently facing?

What strategies are you using?

What strategies do you need to use?

What resources and opportunities do you have available?

Okay, so having spent five minutes on your business plans, I now invite you to make a commitment of five minutes each business day and continue working on your business plans. Once you've responded to the above questions, put on your creative and entrepreneurial hat, and come up with your own thought provoking questions to answer. Take your creative and entrepreneurial spirit, and use this to perfect plans for your business that keep you focused and producing the results you want. Once you start laying down some plans for your business and experience the benefits of doing this, you'll find it easier to continue. The most important step is getting started.

As an entrepreneur or creative, what will it take for you to begin putting some of your business plans onto paper?

What planning for your business do you currently do?

What further planning do you need to do? ie. Sales, marketing, business development.

What will it take to start writing down your business plans?