New Business Planning |
Obviously such a plan should have a clear description of how you want to move your business from where it is to where you want it to be. Every business will have a different vision and way of operating, thus this article will not go into the specifics of what your business is going to do, but we will cover general areas that your business plan should cover. • Existing market situation: - Make sure your plan can accurately describe the current marketing situation, the trends in the existing market, describe the ideal customer that you would like to serve. List and details of all that you know about existing businesses in the industry you wish to enter. You should also accurately describe the features of the product you wish to bring to the market, where you are going to sell it and everything you know about consumers of your product or service. • Competitor Analysis - Take time to study your competitors, find out how they sell the products which are the same as yours, what customers they are targeting, how large of a customer base do they have, how they grow their business and then whether or not their customers are satisfied with the way they do business. Position yourself do better than your competitors by streamlining the business process to a way that suits the intended customers and do better with everything else they do. • Marketing Strategy - Determine who your initial market targets are, what share of that market you wish to get in a specific period of time and accurately describe the reasons for choosing such markets. Map out your goals for the next target and conditions that should be met before such targets can be pursued. • Marketing plan - Remember there is a difference between your marketing strategy and your plan. Your strategy looks at a bigger picture, your goals and the vision that you have for your business. With the marketing plan, you must map out steps on how you are going to make things happen. This should include what methods you are going to use to engage the potential market segments, what marketing media you will use to promote your business, how you will measure the effectiveness of your promotions, monitor and review your progress and so forth. • Financials - This should include your sales targets and objectives. In other words, how much you think you will be making in a specific time period, how much money and what resources your business will need to stay operational in over a period of time. Remember to be conservative with your figures here. Most businesses do not make much in their first two years of operation, so do not over inflate your estimates only to be disappointed when you can not hit the targets. • Management process and business risks - Try to clearly identify who is going to manage your business; what qualifies them to perform the assigned functions. Outline the responsibility and roles that each member will play and how their performance will be monitored. You should also clearly and honestly project your awareness of the risks involved in operating a business, Some of the things you should consider may include the level of management experience, conduciveness of the existing economic and business atmosphere; the impact of suppliers, financier processes on your business and so forth. After a careful analysis and clear documentation of these areas, you should have a pretty good idea of where your business stand and where it is headed. If you are still pretty confident with your honest and reasonable analysis at this point then you should have no problem convincing investors that your idea is good enough to invest in and would make both of you some good business. Good luck writing your detailed business plan! |
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