Daily Biz Solutions

Putting up schedules for the development milestones of your internet business are the most logical, aren’t they? Letting your business develop spontaneously without a solid and logical plan would result into its inevitable failure. Suppose you have a business plan. How should you assess this example of your plan, what are the keystones that should be incorporated into the plan?

The classical example of the internet business plan should describe or more so, define exactly the targets of your business. There are certain things that provide for the survival of your business which you should not forget at no circumstance. An example would be in setting the particular income after the certain amount of time following the start up point. This general frame-worked objective can be engineered reversely to be split into the more basic objectives to drive your business through the shorter periods. Next you should define your customer niche. Should it be a separate individual representing a typical retail type of a customer, or would that rather be a small business company? Your customer niche and your specific field of an interest, the one that you are most obsessive about, the one that you have a most profound expertise in, should be associated most closely. Building up a web site for your store would be unavoidable. Examples might be in building it self-reliantly using the available content management systems, hiring the web designer. This stage would also need your industrious efforts to market your business which may involve some specific technologies such as search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, social marketing, etc.

The closing factor to stress out would be the client base. Developing this base should be the highlight of your business plan. Whatever the finest business qualities that you personally possess, make sure to exercise the best of those while catering this core of your business success – your customer.

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Are you getting ready to develop that business plan that you need to get your business venture off the ground? The problem is, business plan writing is so unlike your regular writing tasks. First off, it requires a different language and tone of voice-something that will resonate among your target investors. So it is not as easy as writing a press release announcing your company’s milestone, or a business letter that you send out to a government agency, client or partner. It requires so much more, including an in-depth understanding of the language of business, a sharp knowledge of your company’s directions, goals and go-to market strategy, as well as enough empathy to understand what your audience needs to hear. If you need help writing your business plan, you will surely find the following tips extremely helpful.

First, remember to do your research before sitting down with your business plan writing task. Prospective venture capitalists who are deciding to invest their money on your business will place so much importance on how well you know the market and how well you understand the way you will position your company in relation to current market conditions. This will give them an idea on how soon they should expect a return on their investment, how much this return should be, and the risks that will affect this development.

Second, part of understanding the market is understanding the types of competition that you will be up against. Find out the nature of your competitors, their strengths and weaknesses, as well as the threats and opportunities that are open to you. Also try to look into their value propositions. Are they competing based on cost or based on value? If you should enter the landscape, should you compete on cost or value, or some other unique selling proposition?

Third, make your audience see the opportunity. The end-goal of every business plan should be to show the audience that given the nature of the business that you intend to set up, the market and competitive landscape, and the risks attached to it, it is still a great opportunity to earn money. You can show by giving them a detailed idea of how much return on investment they stand to gain, and your strategic plan for minimizing the risks and optimizing the possibilities of earning.

Fourth, you also need to make sure that your business plan is comprehensive. Cover all bases by including sections about your company, your product or service offering, the market situation, the management team, as well as the process involved in operations, financials and marketing. Increase engagement by showing these through charts and graphs.

Finally, do the math. Businesspeople, especially investors, love seeing numbers. Even if you hate numbers, you have to take extra effort to learn them enough for you to be able to generate sales predictions from the conservative to the realistic ranges. If you have doubts about your mathematical prowess, you can still do the business plan writing yourself, but you may need to hire somebody else to do all the math.

I wrote my own for my firm. I read books and figured out the sales forecast; and financial expenses and revenue projections. When my firm became Small Business Administration (SBA) 8a certified, I wrote our SBA Form 1010c Business Plan.

I am a strategic planner and AICP certified city planner. In the 1990s, I actually worked as a city planner managing transportation improvement programs, capital improvement programs, and comprehensive development plans. These are mega project oriented plans. I coordinated the City of Atlanta’s 1997 Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) and its accompanying Capital Improvement Program (CIP) representing 400 projects valued at $3.6 Billion. I also managed the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) Transportation [Environmental] Enhancement Activities (TEA) program was 90 proposed projects valued at $62 Million.

What I learned as a city planner is that plans can be extremely pie in the sky. They can be pretty elaborate wish lists to appease political constituents. These types of plans rarely get implemented because there will never be enough money to fund the proposed projects.

As a business owner, I learned that plans need to be much more realistic and broken down into doable action items that result in real return on investment (ROI) and generate real revenue so that real paychecks can be drawn.

Here are some tips:

(1) Your sales forecast is just that – a forecast. It is not carved in stone and will likely not match actual sales. Start with reasonable assumptions and adjust as reality sets in. Your actual sales may be less. This is usually the case. However, you may have great fortune and your actual sales may surpass your forecasted sales.
(2) If after regular, periodic, scheduled reviews, your actual sales are significantly lower than your forecasted, desired sales, then you may want to re-engineer your business model, get sales coaching help, or take some other course of action to increase sales.
(3) Start ups should start with short term business plans which depicts your sales goals and anticipated expenses in short quarterly increments of 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and 12 months.
(4) For the purpose of having a long term vision, create a 3 or 5 year vision with annual sales goals and anticipated expenses.
(5) The business plan goals should be used to influence your operational decisions as you conduct business from day to day.

Here is how No. 5 would work. You would simply put a summary of your business plan sales forecast and anticipated budgeted expenses on your desk as a daily constant reminder of where to drive your ship. Take this summary financial operating plan and gage your actual performance against it. For example, if you need to decide whether or not to spend money to hire a staff person or consultant; or to order certain equipment or supplies, then look over at your business plan first. Ask yourself whether the proposed expense is in alignment with your plan. Ask yourself whether taking on this particular new consulting project or product sales order will catapult you any closer to your sales and profit goals.

Some may argue that business plans should not be the focus of your operations. I beg to differ. I think the plan needs to be right in front of you. In my opinion, it is akin to a simple daily “things to do” list. For example, on any given day you may list out that you need to go to the post office, to the office supply store, to a few meetings, send some emails, do some data entries, etc. This is your road map. If you were able to get it all done, you would have a sense of accomplishment.

A business plan is no different. You look over at your business plan and you let it guide and drive your business decisions so that you can achieve real results.

Another thing I learned as a city planner is that it is important to get buy-in. In order to decide whether or not to include a project in a CDP and its accompanying CIP, city planning professionals hold public meetings to get feedback. Business owners should also get input from individuals they may need buy-in from. Internally, they should make sure the business leadership team has an opportunity to comment on budget and sales projections. This may be a great way to get a dose of reality from differing perspectives. Externally, business owners can turn to nonprofit organizations or other consultants that help small businesses and have dealt with bankers that loan to small businesses.

Cash is Queen! If you are starting a business, you may want to save first. I heard and read two different schools of thoughts when I first started years ago. Some advocate that you do not need money to get started and to make money. That may prove true for some. But, I can tell you there are very real expenses if you want to go about being in business the right, professional way: phone, fax, website hosting, graphics design, office supplies, domain name registration, taxes. The taxes can crush you.

This leads us to the second school of thought which is save first. I have heard that it is best to save 3 months, 6 months or 1 year of your business operating expenses before you launch. The idea is to not be dependent on sales at all. But rather, have savings to invest in your business venture.

If I could do it over, I would have saved extensively while building my network of relationships and client base. Of course, hindsight is 20:20.

I was in the City of Atlanta’s Watershed Department Small Business Development Program. The accounting trainer advised us to bank our customer payments and cut ourselves pay checks. But, she advised that we should put our pay checks away in a drawer and forget about them. This will build up cash in your business bank account and help you to earn creditability so that you can later get lines of credit and loans. Well, what if you were a single mom? What if you actually need to cash that pay check? I am a single mom and this tactic would have never worked for me.

If you make it without planning ahead and implementing your plans, you are probably making it on pure luck. We have all heard people state that business success is 90% luck. Well, it really does not have to be. We can choose to draft and work a plan, or we choose to leave our futures in the hand of Lady Luck.

By Clovia Hamilton, President, Lemongrass Consulting, Inc., http://www.lemongrassplanning.com.

Clovia founded Lemongrass Consulting in 2005 with 25 years of government work experience and serves as a procurement counselor in the Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center (GTPAC). Lemongrass Consulting provides strategic planning solutions including government contracting strategic marketing plans.

When people first start to develop a business, the first thing that many of them are taught to do is to create a business plan. Depending on the size of the business, this could be a huge document or just a few pages. If you want to get a business loan, you are going to have to have a business plan. Read on to find out how you can stray from your business plan and a few other important ideas.

More and more people are switching to bootstrapped home-based businesses and away from the current 9-5 job. People do it for different reasons, some economic and some for peace of mind. If you are bootstrapping a business, your business plan does have to take the classic form. All you need to do is to make sure you have thought about how your business will be organized and if there is room to grow it. Are you going to use it as your retirement, or do you plan on selling it in the future?

Remember that your business plan is just a tool to get you thinking about the different angles that you will need to attack as you move forward. Almost nothing that you plan for will go the way you originally intended it to, so there will be many times when you need to throw your old ideas out the window and re-work the way you were going to run your business.

Business is an ever-evolving process. There is no business that lasts forever. As people’s wants change, the business needs to change as well or it will fail. For that reason, it is important that you re-visit your business plan at least once a year after your business has been established. You may need to revisit and re-work your business plan every quarter when you are just getting started.

If you can learn to move and flow your business to the wants and needs of your customers, then you will be able to develop a long-term viable model that will last you for years to come. It’s all about learning to accept change, letting your winners ride and dropping your losers before you throw too much money at them. Your business plan is just one of the tools that you will need to develop your venture to success, but it’s an important part. Just make sure that you don’t use it as a rulebook and feel free to stray from it any time you need to.