PublishMyself.netPublish YourSelf Here – Articles Directory

Helmuth von Moltke once said “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.” True enough. But it doesn’t stop the armed forces from planning for the future and analyzing all possible alternatives that may require different courses of implementation as roadblocks are encountered. A plan does not guarantee success because much to your chagrin, your enemy may be more organized. Or your enemy might implement their plan in a more structured and deliberate manner, thereby leaving no stone unturned on the path to victory. Make no mistake about it. As I consult with clients, I tell them that if they are starting a business or are currently in business their competition creates a predatory environment. Their resources are limited. Competition sees you as a threat. Only those that can plan and can implement that plan while being flexible to a changing business world will survive.
Whether you need financing or not, whether you are a start up or a successful 3 year old business, if you do not crystallize your vision of future success and detail how you will achieve your goals, then how can you communicate this vision to others? How can you reach customers and ask them to buy from you? How can you convince lenders and investors to loan you their money? How can you put in place specific actions to grow?
At MJD Business Advice we teach clients that the starting point for building the overwhelming desire to achieve outstanding results in business is to set an objective that truly inspires. In order to achieve any goal you will need to make decisions and trade-offs regarding the business operations that stairstep toward your goal. If a client’s goal is not clear in their own mind, making such decisions and trade-offs will be difficult if not impossible. To summarize, the process of building a business begins by visualizing the business as you want to be. Then you must identify the marketing strategies, costs, operational processes, and human resource requirements that you need to establish, eliminate, or improve upon if your ideal business is to be created or is to grow.
We see clients that many times ask about outsourcing a business plan or buying software samples of business plans. These services claim to save time and seem to make the process easier. But a successful plan is not so much about format or subheadings. What is important is the process of creating the plan. Now please don’t misunderstand me and think I said a business plan does not have to be detailed; quite the opposite. In order to successfully launch a company or to grow from year 3 to year 4 your plan should be very detailed in every aspect, especially when formulating financial projections. The plan cannot be ambiguous. It must be factual and while developing the plan, you should be uncovering facts. Remember it’s you along with your team developing the goals, strategy and action plan that will provide a GPS to success. As I tell clients, you can’t be thinking about the color of your business cards or whether you should develop a brochure much less what goes into it once you are open for business and trying to generate sales and pay bills.
Many entrepreneurs are too busy to develop a plan or if you are starting a business you might not know what goes into a business plan. In my experience, if you meet lender qualifications, plans that win funding come from a true collaboration between a skilled consultant/facilitator and the entrepreneur’s team of employees and advisors. Working together the entrepreneur and the advisor/counselor can take all the pieces and make the final plan into a readable, accessible document that will stand up to investor/lender scrutiny.
Sure there have been many successful businesses that have not done a business plan. You hear a lot of people say it’s a pain to do a business plan. This can be true but the business plan is not the end. It’s the thought processes necessary to develop the plan that are important. To begin with, essentially a plan is reconnaissance. The plan will get to what is the opportunity, what are the alternatives, what’s a potential strategy for making it happen and that reconnaissance can be done pretty rapidly and insightfully. Therefore the business plan is a very valuable thing to do and in today’s fragile and unstable environment, why would you take a chance and just hope everything works out for the positive?

Mike Daley is the owner of MJD Business Advice, LLC. The business website is www.mjdbusinessadvice.com and MJD Business Advice LLC provides business consulting, counseling and advice to startups and established businesses as well as conducting many seminars.

HTML Version:

Text Version:

Article Url: