A good friend of mine, Mike Belham, recently made a great blog on his website. This is what he said...

 

"My nature is to be a thinker and a planner. I need a road map of where I want to be and how I intend to get there. My friends and colleagues whose nature is to be a ‘go getter’ can find this a bit frustrating.

 

When planning my own business, one of the first things I did was to write a business plan.

 

To many the writing of a business plan is something you are forced to do when you need to raise capital from your bank manager, but I strongly recommend you to write one if you haven’t already.

 

Here are some key components to a business plan:

 

What is your business about?

• What service/product do you sell?
• Who are your competitors?
• Why would your customers buy from you and not your competitors?
• Set some business goals
• What is in it for you

Know your customers

• Who will need your product or services?
• How would they look for your product or service?
• Do you need new customers for each sale or will you get repeat customers?
• What do you estimate the average order value to be?

Your business Finances

• What are your monthly overheads (All your expenses that exist whether or not you get any sales)?
• What is the cost of each sale?
• How much do you need per month?
• Work out the net income per sale (your sale value minus the sale cost) and divide the combined cost of your monthly overheads and monthly wage by your net income per sale. This will give you a guide to how many sales per month you will require to break even.
• If you want to invest in new equipment or premises then divide the cost of the investment by your net income per sale figure to work out how many sales would be required to finance the investment.
• By adding the number of sales required together you can set a minimum yearly target.

Your marketing plan

You should now know who your customers are, what they need from you, how they might find you, and roughly how many customers you need to find. Your marketing plan should include:

• Methods for reaching those customers
• How you intend to track results from those methods
• A plan with dates and milestones against which you can measure progress.

Don’t be afraid to change and amend your business plan

If you find that bits of your business plan are not working in the real world then you need to take a fresh look, fix it if you can, and try something else if you can’t.

 

Changing your business plan is not an admission you got it wrong, but it is a vital part of nurturing your business to full growth.

 

Don’t keep it in a locked drawer

I strongly recommend that you gather a small group of close friends around you from the business community who are willing to help and advise you. They are always a good starting point when seeking advice on my business plan.

 

I have tried the paid advisor route and do have some excellent professionals who I would recommend to anyone, you can find links to most of them at here: http://www.truelight-services.co.uk/links.htm

 WISE WORD INDEED, MIKE...