The Business Plan Summary is the basis for inspiring both you and your employees while getting everyone heading in the same direction. When your employees know where the company is going, they will get you there.

How and when to engage your employees in the planning process

As you get started, consider how and when to involve other employees. We know that employees are much more committed to completing action plans they understand and have a hand in creating.

As a general guideline, Steps 1 and 2, the Business Plan Summary and the Values sections, are leadership respon- sibilities and should be written by the CEO with input from other senior staff. There are a couple of ways of doing this. The CEO can prepare a draft document for review and critique by the senior management team, or the executive team can create these documents together.

CHAPTER 3 – THE 4 STEP BUSINESS PLAN

From a practical perspective, we find the first method works best, with the CEO outlining his/her aspirations for the business and bringing this to the senior team for critique and changes. A colleague of mine, Doug Bouey, who has been coaching CEO’s for many years, put it this way:

Presidents have 3 missions:

  • Set the game
  • Staff the organization
  • Keep the edge on

At the top of the house is where these happen. Nowhere else.

As you get into Steps 3 and 4 we suggest you involve a wider circle of employees. Your company size and how you are structured will affect how and when you engage the others.

/0 Comments/by

Once the draft plan is written, we suggest you review…

  1. The organization structure: Are there any changes, additions, deletions needed to align your people to deliver on the action plans? As your plans change over time, your organization structure may also need to change. Note, the plan leads the structure, not the reverse.
  2. Key performance indicators (KPI’s): As you move forward with your action plans, you and your employees will want to monitor your progress. Watch what you are tracking. Are they the right indicators? Your key indi- cators should focus on the economic drivers of your business. Remember the phrase: What gets measured, gets done.
  3. Business Plan review dates: I mentioned earlier – this is where most business plans fail. It doesn’t take a lot of time to review and revise your business plan, so put these dates in the corporate calendar, make them public, and Don’t Change Them!

In addition to any other regular meetings, whether it is a daily huddle, weekly or monthly update meetings, etc., we recommend a formal quarterly business plan review meeting, separate and distinct from all the other meet- ings. Remember, business planning is a continuous exercise, not an annual event.

/0 Comments/by

Step 4: Detailed Action Plans

Before turning your mind to specific action plans, we suggest you start this section by making a list of Critical Impediments. This will give you a reference point, and generate some ideas to prime the pump as you begin the important work of developing detailed action plans for each section of the business. Critical Impediments are current critical issues, problems and challenges you feel might impede the accomplishment of your overall goals – what is getting in the way or holding you back?

Action Plans are your “to-do” list. To ensure you create a complete list, we break the business into 8 parts, looking at it from 8 points of view: Marketing, sales, operations/customer service, people, partners/alliances/ influencers, finance and administration, technology, community and the environment.

  1. Marketing: What do you need to do to build your brand and drive new business opportunities or leads to your company?
  2. Sales: What do you need to do, differently, or better, or more effectively to turn these leads into contracts, and close more deals?
  3. Operations and Customer Service: What do you need to do better, and more cost effectively, to improve services and deliver on your promises in the sales contract, and create repeat customers, your customers for life?
  4. People of your business: How you build talent in your company. This focuses on recruiting, training, coach- ing, and your reward and compensation systems?
  5. Partners, Alliances, Influencers: What do we need to do to build stronger, more effective relationships with our Partners (suppliers), Alliances and Influencers?
  6. Finance and Administration: What action steps are needed to improve financial controls, management, information systems, and the administration support services internally?
  7. Technology: Specific company wide initiatives of constant technology upgrades – what are they, what are your priorities?
  8. Community Involvement and Environment: A thoughtful, pro-active plan that explains how your company interacts in your “community” and your contribution to the environment.

When you have a plan that moves forward with each of these parts, you avoid a common trap of developing one area of your business at the expense of another – all these parts need to work smoothly together, moving forward, with each section contributing to the company goals.

Note: Most if not all, business activities are contained in these 8 areas. If you have an initiative that does not fit neatly into these categories, we suggest you place it in the area where most of the resources will be available. Eg. Research and development could be listed in either the marketing section or operations. Or a Procurement project could be added to the marketing and sales area.

/0 Comments/by

Step 3: The Building Blocks

Document the current state of your business in terms of:

  • Who are your customers, your target market? Who do you sell to? This is a list of descriptive criteria that you use to identify your ideal customers.
    • What are your current products, services, and fees? This section will clarify what you sell and your pricing model.
    • Who are your partners, alliances and influencers? Those organizations you work closely with to deliver on your promises and who may be involved in your marketing or sales strategies.
    • Who are your competitors? Who are your major competitors and what do they do better than you?

Taking time to clearly understand and document this information takes a few minutes up front, but will yield results in terms of time, efficiency, and clearer understanding, when you start looking at the detailed action plans later on.

/0 Comments/by
,

Step 2: A Description Your Corporate Values

These are the specific behaviours, attitudes and beliefs that are necessary for success and make up the personal- ity and culture of your company. These are critically important and will pay dividends well into the future if they are clearly understood and practiced rigorously and consistently.

/0 Comments/by
, , , , ,

Step 1: Drafting the Business Plan Summary

This is a short, succinct, 1-2 page outline, that contains a clear description of the following:

  • Unique Business Proposition

This is the who, what, where and how of your business that makes you special and unique.

  • Purpose for being in this business, as seen from the customer’s perspective.

This is the “WHY” of your business. What fundamental need are you filling for your customer?

(Note: This is a critical piece of your plan and may take awhile for you to make it clear.)

  • Long and short term goals, and
  • Strategies necessary to execute in order to reach your goals.
/0 Comments/by
,

The Planning Process

There is a process to planning, and it is a continuous process, as your plan will be constantly changing in response to your changing business situation. Fixing regular review dates, in your corporate calendar, is critical to the success of this planning process. If you commit to this discipline, you will find, after a couple of quarters, these regularly scheduled review meetings will

  • Create a planning habit in the company
  • Demonstrate your commitment to the plan, (which, is the #1 reason most plans fail) and
  • Build in accountability for the execution. (You will see how this accountability works later in the workbook in the Action Plans section.)

Good planning is a collaborative process. This workbook is designed to allow the company leaders to set the overall direction for the business and also engage appropriate level of employee participation. Your plan gains momentum when employees are involved in creating the action plans – and are held accountable for it’s execution. It’s interesting to watch the behaviour at the reporting out at the first quarterly review meeting, and then observe the changes as the team gets into motion in the following months. As employees gain a clearer understanding of where you are, where you are going and how you intend to get there, they will align their efforts with yours to accelerate your growth.

/0 Comments/by
,

What exactly is a business plan?

A Business Plan has two parts.

The first part is the narrative plan: A description of what you expect your business to achieve and how you will accomplish these goals. It starts with an outline of where you are today, and includes a description of your destination, and how you will get there. In plain terms, the narrative plan is a road map for the journey ahead.

The second piece of the business plan is the financial projections. These typically include:

  • An annual budget which shows your revenue and profit projections
  • Forecasted Balance Sheet , future expected asset growth
  • Cash flow projections
  • A Capital Budget that reflects the capital investments needed for the business to perform on its plan

Many companies create an annual budget, a forecast of revenue and expenses, and call this their business plan. It’s important to recognize that the narrative business plan leads this process. Without the narrative plan, you have no foundation to make financial projections. (Other than repeating last year’s numbers and fudging in an arbitrary growth factor.)

There are several other reasons for writing a narrative business plan. Firstly, to inspire your employees to deliver on a specific set of performance metrics, or goals. We all like to know how we are doing, from the CEO to the sales team, the service reps or the admin group. The business plan provides the reference point to measure progress.

Secondly, to improve and strengthen teamwork and cohesive- ness – people enjoy working with teammates to reach a goal, to achieve something worthwhile, doing it together, celebrat- ing their successes, learning from their mistakes.

Finally, and most importantly, writing your narrative business plan will help you to better understand your business – you need to truly understand your business if you want others to understand it and be engaged with you in achieving extraordi- nary results.

A well managed business plan will put you back in control of your business. With clarity and control comes peace of mind, not only for the owner and leadership team, but for all employees; that feeling, throughout the whole organization, of knowing where you are, where you’re going, how you are

going to get there, and how each individual can contribute on a personal level.

/0 Comments/by

About Financial Projections

Preparing a budget and running future financial projections is an important part of your business plan. There are many tools available on the internet to help you do that, and you can seek advice from your accountant if this is not your area of expertise.

The internet is also a great source of other business planning tools if your are preparing a “business case” to help raise funding for a new business. These ser- vices typically offer templates to explain your new business in broad terms and spreadsheets to help you make financial projections, but they are not designed to help you operate your business from a plan.

/0 Comments/by

Gain a deeper understanding of your business

As you create your written plan you will gain a deeper understanding of your business and be able to effectively communicate this understanding to your employees, your customers, and to your business partners. Our format and workbook were created through many years of simplifying and refining core business principles and best practices. The program can be tailored to any size of business or types of business, including non profit organiza- tions and will work at any stage of the business life cycle.

Plan Genie will help you quickly and efficiently write a narrative business plan for your company, and to refresh your plan on a regularly scheduled basis. As you revise your business plan each quarter, you and your employ- ees will gain a greater understanding of your core business and broaden your knowledge of effective business practices.

This workbook has eight segments so you can work at your own pace. The first three segments will give you an overview of the planning process and our 4 Step Method for writing your business plan. The next four segments will take you through the 4 Steps and the final segment deals with tracking your progress and refreshing your plan on a continuous basis.

We strongly believe that a business plan is the foundation for a successful business, yet the majority of busi- ness leaders fail at this important responsibility. Fewer than 20% of small to mid size companies have a written business plan that is reviewed on a regular basis. Simply by working through this program you will separate your company from 80% of your completion.

/0 Comments/by