Friday, November 1, 2013

Writing A Small Business Plan


by Zak Barton


Small business plan One of the most important tasks to carry out when you are planning to launch a brand new small business, is to take time to prepare a fully functional small business plan.

Strategy Formulation is a fundamental process that identifies the critical areas to be addressed and sets the priorities for the business across an agreed strategy period.By focusing on the key areas that are identified as part of this process, the effective manager and business owner ensures laser-like focus in achieving results.The small business plan integrates and aligns all the business activities around these critical areas and ensures that all effort is targeted, contained and understood by everyone in the business.Having a plan is critical. It ensures that the right things get done, within the time frames allotted, and allows for the emergence of new initiatives when the plan is reviewed.

You must have a plan for many different areas of starting a small business. How are you going to fund the start up fees? How do you expect to sell your product/service? How do you expect to pay your employees? How are you going to promote your company effectively? Most importantly and what most business owners don't think about is where do you want your business to be in 5...10...20 years?Creating the right small business plan is all about creating effective systems. A system is something that you can use over and over again in different situations to receive expected results. You at least have some idea of what's going to happen if you have the right systems in place.

I am writing this guide in small sections to allow you to follow the plan in your own time. This article will demonstrate the complete overview of what you will need to consider when writing your small business plan.

So what are your opening expenses? Here are some questions you need to answer to find out your estimated dollar amount:How much money does your product or service cost you?,How much money will you charge for your service/product?,How much money do you require to live for two years with no profit coming in from your business (safety precaution)?,How much will it cost for your employees for 2 years?,What are your legal fees?,What are your CPA fees?,How much will getting a physical location cost you (if needed)?

Tasks.Objectives must be broken down into a series of tasks and jobs that need to be completed to ensure that the given objective is met. These tasks must be specific, agreed, realistic, targeted and have accountabilities and responsibilities clearly assigned to them.

Having a thorough small business plan is going to help you get that start up money though. As long as you can show the lenders how you plan on getting a return on their investment, you will be set. It doesn't matter if you have horrible credit or don't know anybody that will lend you large amounts of money. You can always find a way. Think outside the box.Alright the next step should be the simplest for you. You want to write down your complete sales funnel for how you plan to sell your product or service. Go through every step you expect a customer to go through to reach your bank account. What are you selling exactly? How are you packaging the items? Are you providing multiple services and products? What do you expect to be your number one seller? What's your specialty?

Accountabilities and Responsibilities.All the tasks must be assigned to people who take responsibility for getting them completed within the agreed time frames. The successful small business has developed a culture where the taking of personal responsibility for an assigned task is simply a given.

In my next article we shall begin attacking each aspect of the business plan in detail beginning with your business aims.I hope you find this resource useful and remember, taking a week or so to write your small business plan will save you time AND money in the future.




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