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

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When you are involved with a business it is important that you have a clear direction and that your business has a plan of attack. The business plan is a document that will outline a number of key areas that your business will need to consider to achieve success.

The business plan will identify your businesses goals, and look at how you can successfully implement processes and procedures to obtain those goals. This will draw on a range of business areas, including accounting, HR, marketing and operations.

How you progress with your business plan can be unique as your business; however the key areas that are usually developed for a business plan are as follows.

o Your organizations background
o Management structure and plans for your business
o Organisational marketing plan
o Operations planning
o Financial planning of the business
o Goals and actions to take with the business

Once you have understood these areas are ready to move forward with your business plan then you can consider how to structure it. This is a straightforward process. For those who are great at the ideas generation, but tend to get stuck on the nitty gritty details, a business template is the perfect option for you.

A template for your business plan will outline the priority information that is required, and whilst you can pay someone to do this for you, there are a number of free templates available. Try doing a quick search of the net and plenty of options come up.

Typically your business focus will dictate the precise contents of your business plan, but getting a basic feel for what is required goes hand in hand with the production of a concise plan, tailored just for your business.

The contents page of your business plan may read something like this.

o Executive Summary
o Organisational Goals
o Management Plan
o Research and Analysis on Target Market
o Marketing Plan
o Operational Planning
o Financial Organisation
o Progress Plans

One of the key areas that you will cover in your business plan is the Executive Summary. Again this can be as individual as your business, but it will need to focus on decisions that need to be made by your organization, and sell the reasons for approval of that course of action.

The final thing that you will need to consider with your business plan is who your target audience is. If you are a large corporation with a number of external stakeholders, such as shareholders and board members, then you will need to prepare your business plan to reflect this. A business plan that targets this audience will often be detailed in its financial analysis and its progress reporting.

If you are a smaller business, or you are self employed then your business plan most likely serves a different purpose. Most likely your business plan is focused on distribution to internal stakeholders. This being the case you will want your plan to focus on goals and progress that needs to be made by the key individuals or departments in the company. An example of this is the strategic business plan, which states internal targets for the organisation, as well as giving information about how to reach the goals laid out in the strategic planning.

Whatever you organisation is involved in, a business plan is a vital document. Even in its simplest form, there is no doubt that having a set of guidelines and goals is a key to ensuring success and progression in your chosen field of business.

Question about business plan

my email mankiev@msn.com

please help

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Free Resources http://www.businessplandirectory.net/

A plan for your small business is useful if you want to focus yourself and get an overall picture of what you have to do in order to build your enterprise. On top of that, a good business plan is an absolute must if you want to convince institutions or individuals to loan money or invest in your business. One way to organize your business plan is to compose it like an informative news article, explaining the “who,” “what,” “when,” “why, and “how” of your business.

Who are you?
Write about your background and previous experience in your field. Tell about your notable accomplishments, and about your partners and staff. If your company has been in business for some time now, then write about your “track record.” Explain what your company has already accomplished and give an idea of how it stands in relation to competitors in your particular field of business.

What are Your Products or Services?
What are you producing or what are you going to produce? What are your products or services? What kind of revenue will these activities be bringing in or what is the expected range of revenue once the products are launched? Answer these questions giving a complete picture of the principal activity that you are engaged in or will be engaged in during the timeline of this business plan.

When Will things Happen?
If you have a new start-up business, this section of the plan will allow you to explain the steps that are needed to set-up your business and make it fully operational. How much time do you need? When will the business be up and running? If you are have an already existing business, it is useful to place somewhere in the plan a list of targets that you want to achieve and give approximate dates as to when these targets can be reached.

Where is Your Business?
Where are you located? Do you work at home or do you have business premises? If you have a business location such as a store or factory, then explain about the size and capacity of this establishment. What is the business climate like in your area? Are there significant competitors and what are your prospects of competing in this market? Answer these questions as best you can and give yourself and would-be investors a clear picture of where your business is situated geographically and with relation to your overall market.

Why are you in Business?
Explain why your particular enterprise, product or service is needed. What can your add to the already existing area of business that your are entering? What need are you going to fill? The answers to these questions are particularly important for investors looking for opportunities in emerging businesses and emerging markets.

How will it all Happen?
Your sales and marketing plan should be outlined in this section. Explain how you intend to establish your product or service and what steps you will take to create or expand your customer base. How will you finance the start-up and/or expansion of your business? Explain the source of your funds whether you have existing loans or liabilities. How much money do you need to raise in order to get realize your overall plan for the launching or expansion of your business? Explain how you are going to translate your business idea into a living reality.

Take a look at your planned business or your existing business from the perspective that has been outlined in this article, and write a concise business plan. It will help to bring clarity to your operations and convince investors and lenders to participate in your enterprise.

Question about business plan

Other than the SBA and SCORE, what are some practical tools we can use to build our business plan? We have heard of Palo Alto's "Business Plan Pro", is there anything better out there?

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