WEB INSIGHTS
BUILDING YOUR BUSINESS PLAN

By Marc Kramer
"Web Sight"
marc@kramercommunications.com

Last week, I encouraged anyone who has lost or is jeopardy of losing his or her position to strike out on his or her own. Before you begin selling yourself to prospective clients, you need to take the time to develop a business plan. There are two types of business plans.

One type of business plan is used for raising capital and provides overviews of what your business does, how you plan to make money, market the company, sell the product/service, who is on the management team, five year financial projections and how much of the business you are looking to sell and the price for the stock. This type of plan is usually about 15 to 30 page including financials.

The second type of business plan is a road map on how you plan to start and run your business. Some people may call it an operating plan. It’s a plan that is only meant for you and your team, if you have one.

The plan consists of 12 parts:

1. Business description - Describe what you plan to sell and bounce it off of friends and business associates and see how they respond. The best test is if your children or nieces and nephews of school grade age can explain it.
2. Objectives - Develop some objectives that you would like to accomplish such as bringing in enough revenue to cover expenses, signing up "x" number of clients.
3. Market - Decide who you plan to market your product/service to and what size companies you will target and what geographic area you will focus on. I focus my consulting practice primarily to New York, New Jersey, Delaware and eastern Pennsylvania. I don’t want to hop on any planes to meet prospective clients.
4. Marketing Strategy - Develop a list of potential customers and influencers. Influencers are companies and individuals that can assist you in reaching your targeted buyer. Make a list of tactics you plan to use to get in front of your quarry. This ranges from organizations to join to events to attend to getting on panel discussions to build visibility.
5. Sales Strategy - Develop the process you plan to use to sell your product/service. The process should start with a letter or e-mail followed by a telephone call followed by an in person meeting and finally asking for the sale. Figure out who and how many people you will need to meet in any organization to get a sale and then project how long it will take and add 30 to 90 days to that number.
6. Revenue Sources - Describe how you plan to make money. In my case, I make money from writing various types of plans, writing books and newspaper columns.
7. Competition - Describe who your real competition is. If you are starting a consulting practice that provides business development services find out from local attorneys, accountants and regional business associations about competitors and what they are offering. Write out what makes you different and better so you know what to say to prospective clients.
8. Customer Retention Strategy - Develop tactics for how you plan to retain clients. I send my clients books and articles and try to find speaking opportunities for them.
9. Web Site - Purchase a domain name from Alldomains, which I have found to be much cheaper than Register.com, and develop content for a short web site. Go to Bigstep.com, which will allow you to develop your site for free and host it for a reasonable fee.
10. Supply and Equipment list - One of the biggest time waster’s is going back and forth to business supply stores. Sign up for a corporate credit card with one of the large business supply companies such as Staples and order everything online.
11. Launch Plan - Develop a spread sheet that has months in one column and activities in another so you can focus on what you need to do to build your business.
12. Financial projections - Develop a spreadsheet listing all of your expenses. This includes telephone, gas, Internet connectivity, computers, business cards, etc.

Unless you are looking to raise money and need someone like myself who understands investors, you should purchase one of two software packages:

Business Plan Writer - This product was created by Nova (www.nova.com) and provides a template that uses a series of questions. There are 125 sample business plans to choose from, easy to use graphics and fonts. It’s a quality product, but I found it a bit overwhelming, and it took me a lot of time to answer all of the questions. I got the impression that the creator was more of an academic than someone who has written business plans for a living. This product also comes with Small Business Attorney, which is a nice package of template legal documents that can be used when setting up contracts.

Business Plan Pro - This product was developed by Palo Alto Software (www.paloaltoo.com) and also uses a similar system to Business Plan Writer. I found Business Plan Pro not to be as robust as Business Plan writer, but easier to use.

My last piece of advice is don’t skip this step of developing your business. Developing a business plan puts you in the right mindset and helps you focus on what you need to do to succeed.