Throw Away Your Business Plan and Plan Your Business

Most days I spend a great deal of my time helping small businesses succeed. One thing in common with many of these businesses, they don’t know where they are going. They know they want to make money, grow into a big company selling their product or services. The problem is, a great percentage of them have no idea how they are going to realize the great vision they have for their companies. What they need is a plan.

Before you say, “not another business planning article,” I am not talking about a traditional business plan. I appreciate traditional business plans, but many times they are geared more towards raising capital from banks and investors than guiding your business to success. What I am talking about is simple, to the point, and built to drive results.

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To be successful, you have to have goals, a definition of what you want to achieve. When I ask small business owners about thier goals,  many times they get excited and start talking about how big their multinational conglomerate will be in 5 to 10 years. Then I ask them about thier goals for this year, this month, and this week. When we look at reality and not thier dreams, they usually don’t have a clue how they are going to get through the month.

That’s right, dreaming is good, but unless you are good on cash and operating capital, what you need to focus on is keeping the lights on next month. I am not saying that you shouldn’t have lofty dreams. Dreams motivate us, but we often spend too much time dreaming and less time making the dream a reality. Even the greatest planners have a problem projecting a plan to be effective beyond 1 year. Things happen that can not be planned for and plans are forced to change. So, continue to dream big, but concentrate your planning on 1 year and less.

Your plan doesn’t have to be perfect and the more you plan the better you will get at it. So, spend a little time at the start of each business day and focus on your plan.

OK, now we are finally to the meat of this discussion. I want to share a method of planning that anyone can do. This method is rooted in simplicity. You don’t have to write long explanations, just quick bullets. It is based on setting goals for each functional area of your business. You can add the level of details that you need, but only do as much as you are willing and able to maintain daily.

Open your word processor and copy and paste this list:

• Finance
• Marketing
• Sales
• Operations
• Human Resources
• Administration

These items will provide the heading for each list. Under each heading you will fill in goals for this year for each functional area. Then under each bullet you will outline tactics that you can tackle month to month, day to day to reach your goals.

All you are doing is creating a simple task list that you can work daily to achieve your desired goals. For example:

Sales:

• Goals:

  • Sell 5 units per month with an average $1,000 per unit cost
  • Sell 1 $5,000 unit per quarter
  • Sell first $10,000 unit by end of fiscal year

• Tactics:

  � Week of 2/15

  • Contact 25 new leads per week - Contacted 5, 14, 18
  • Deliver 5 presentations per week - Delivered 1, 3
  • Sales:
    • $1,000: 1, 2, 3
    • $5,000:
    • $10,000:
  • Attend 2 networking events per week - Attended Executive Circle, Attend Biz Mixer 2/19
  • Spend 1 hour on online social networks everyday - working Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

I’m not going to give a long drawn out, step by step guide to building this plan. It’s so simple that you should be able to do it without focusing on mechanics or trying to get it right according to some guidelines that I give to you. Make it make sense to you. Fit it to the context of your business.

Just focus on supporting goals with tactics that will help achieve the goals. Make your goals realistic and short-term. When you are steadily reaching one goal boost the goal. If you are not making a weekly goal find out why and fix the problem or lower the goal and adjust your annual goal.

Make your tactics something you can think about daily or weekly. If a tactic isn’t working for you, try another one. If a tactic is producing, try to expand it. If you don’t have time or you need help with your tactics, make sure you add a hiring goal under human resources.

One last thing, when you get the plan written you will have a bunch of goals and tactics staring at you and it can be kind of overwhelming. So, you have to prioritize your goals. If you aren’t achieving your goals or implementing all of your tactics don’t panic, you are uncovering soft spots in your plan that need to be strengthened. Not getting everything right is expected, but the difference is, now you know exactly where you need to change. Just keep experimenting with tactics, ask for help from other business owners, leave me a comment, visit your local SBA.

The point is that there is no excuse for not having some sort of plan and direction for where you are trying to go with your business.

Let me know if I can help.

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 The knowledge of many is much stronger than the knowledge of one. Share your business problems with us to get the collective brain power of UMN invested in a solution for you. 

Charles Bryant
URBANMarketingNetwork.com

Tags: business planning

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