There’s an old saying “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”, and this is certainly the case when it comes to business. Too often business owners believe their product or service will do the talking and fail to properly plan to achieve their goals. Whether it’s planning for expansion, planning to start your own business, planning for succession, or planning for sale, a good business plan means planning for success and here are the critical tips for attaining it.
The plan…
A good business plan is like a map of where you want to go and what activities are required to ensure success. It takes into account what issues or factors you are likely to encounter along the way and any additional learning you might need to take on your journey, given your expertise and experience in your chosen field.
With a good plan a business owner gains clarity from the chaos of their dreams, wishes and desires, and with clarity comes the certainty of success.
Knowing how…
Most business owners know WHAT they want to do or achieve, they also have the passion and the knowledge WHY they want to do it, but far too many business owners don’t know HOW to achieve their goals and business planning is all about the HOW.
The Steps…
To create a proper business plan you need to work through a process:
- Thoughts – These are your dreams, wishes and aspirations
- More thoughts
- Chaos – The period between thoughts, dreams and action
- Form and direction – Work through the chaos to find form and direction.
- Clarity – With the form and direction comes
- Certainty – From clarity you can begin to act upon your dreams with certainty.
- Success – Certainty about what you want and how to achieve it is success.
- Activity – while we cannot control the result, we can control the activity.
- Result – The activity determines the result.
The result…
With a proper business plan in hand so much more can open up to you, enabling you to be more certain and therefore relaxed about your business. A plan allows you to be more comfortable and achieve more in less time. It will lead you to be an improved employer with better employee relations. A plan allows for reduced overheads, increased returns, and happier customers.
Download Business Plan Template
