How to Implement a Business Plan

Implementing Your Small Business Plan

Your Plan Becomes a Reality

This is the 3rd article of our Business Planning series. I am assuming you have completed your plan and we are now ready to actually start using it.

The most important thing about planning for any type of business, is having the ability to implement that plan into real goals that are achievable; daily, weekly and monthly. A big fat 60 page plan that is filed and forgotten is ridiculously useless.

I never plan ahead further than a year. Business changes constantly as will the direction of where you are aiming to take your business. To allow yourself to be flexible as an entrepreneur, don’t plan too far ahead. Too much planning ahead can also lead to you becoming overwhelmed at the thought of trying to achieve so much. Keep it short and precise and achievable and there will be more chance that you will actually achieve it.

Ok, so now you have that plan we need to look at how to implement it.

There are 3 major areas of your plan that you are going to live by:

1. Budget and Projections

2. Management Process

3. Growth and Marketing

If you implement nothing else but your goals for these areas, you will do just fine.

1. Budgeting and Projecting

From your business plan you will have a profit and loss projection and budget for the year. Please print off and stick your projections and budget somewhere visible i.e. Right in front of where you work, on the fridge etc.

Inside whatever accounting software you are going to use (we recommend Quickbooks), ensure that you have a budget that is easily accessible or possibly set up your system to allow you to view your live figures versus your budget in a live format. To begin with, do your accounts weekly so that each week you are sticking to your budget. The same goes with your projections.

If you are not meeting your projected profit targets, take action immediately and create marketing ventures that will help you ensure that you reach your targets. Our Ebooks offer you a smorgasbord of marketing and advertising options to choose from that you can implement each month; most of which are free.

2. Management Processes

Within your plan you will have identified how you would like the business to run each day and what management processes and systems you are going to use to ensure your business runs smoothly. Just because you have outlined those processes in your plan doesn’t mean that you are automatically going to practice them diligently does it?

How do we make sure we are systemised? We simply take action. If you have staff; delegate these tasks immediately. If not, set a reminder once per month to ensure that your processes are working the best way that they possibly can.

Identify each month what takes the most of your time, what gives you the most grief and what can be done quicker and easier so that you can focus on driving your business. If emailing gives you grief, vow to set certain times per day or week to email or set up autoresponders. If you despise accounting and bookwork, hire someone else to do it. Chances are they will do a better job and in about half the time it takes you.

Whatever systems you use will need to be updated every now and then, the hard part is being diligent about allowing the time (an hour here and then) to actually take action towards refining them. Once you are in the habit of doing this it will become easy. Make the effort to write out a repetitive list of what will require the most work and ensure your staff are pro-active towards streamlining your business. The more you align your processes to allow yourself more time, the more time and freedom you will have. Spare time and freedom = less stress = happy business manager. For loads of great tips on how to streamline your systems check our Ebooks.

3. Growth and Marketing

This was the most important part of your plan and is the most important part of your business. So how are you going to implement all those brilliant marketing ideas?

Firstly, start off with completing every single free marketing strategy that you can to drive people to your door. Passing out cards, networking, free directory listings, newsletters and many more of these types of activities will help you build your business as well as your business identity and credibility. Make it a habit to continue with free marketing principles each day.For a full list of Free Marketing Techniques visit our website.

Once you are in the habit of allowing a certain time or day per week to work on your free marketing, if your budget allows you can start to add in paid marketing techniques. Add in one at a time so that you can see the results and split test every piece of marketing material that you can.

Every month you are going to construct a new one page marketing plan (there is one available as apart of our Ebooks.)You will refer to your business plan for ideas and add in new techniques each month. You will be surprised how many of those brilliant ideas you might have forgotten about! Work with your budget to ensure that you are not overstepping your cash boundaries and slowly add in more and more techniques as the cashflow allows.

Remove what doesn’t work and replace it with something else. I personally have this simple plan stuck on my cork board and I make notes on how many leads and sales I can see each month. I find it easier to visually see where I am heading. A fancy marketing plan inside your laptop that never gets a look in is pointless. Use a whiteboard or a simple one page plan to delegate these activities to yourself or your staff each week.

Each week, allow one day to work solely on marketing. Even if on that day you can only delegate an hour of your time… 4 hours a month is better than nothing. As your business begins to grow and change so will your ideas about where you intend to take your business so again do not plan too far ahead. Work within realistic time frames and within your budget. Stick to your weekly routine and allow brain time for marketing and growth.  Make it a habit to grow your business.

With your plan now in action you are going to see some amazing and positive changes take hold. You are now in the habit of budgeting, systemising and planning to grow your business. With all of these things in place there is no way that you can fail. Organisation need not be tedious. Allow yourself specific times each week to accomplish each task and give yourself short time frames. Once it’s done, forget about it and get on with enjoying your life. For a streamlined process that will ensure you succeed each day as a business manager and to receive marketing ideas and strategies on tap check out our Ebooks or become a BusiWizard Member today.

Happy Implementing!

Heidi Shannon

BusiWizard Founder, Small Business Web and Marketing Coach, Author of ‘The Ultimate Guide to Small Business Management Ebook Series’

support@busiwizard.com

Question about business plan

What is the format of a business plan for financial advisors?
I am going thru the interview process with Smith Barney and one of their requirements is to form a business plan of how I plan on reaching the requirements within in a 2 year period. Has anyone put a business plan together or can give advice on how to put one together and in what format?

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