Sunday, March 16, 2008

3 Keys to Writing a Strategic Business Plan That Unlocks Your True Potential

3 Keys to Writing a Strategic Business Plan That Unlocks Your True Potential





I want to present to you today an exact process for writing a strategic business plan. A process that potentially gives you the best chance of operating successfully no matter what business you are in.



Before we do this - I have a question. Why should you plan? Simple Answer really. Research suggests businesses with a workable written current plan achieve 63% higher growth than those in business without a plan.



I am sure in theory you know this to be true as well. Clearly having a plan to success for anything is better than no plan. This applies to life, building a house or running a business (as well as most significant other tasks in life).




Step 1 in Writing a Strategic Business Plan - Your Business Analysis



Starting point for planning is to take stock of your current situation. What is the current data or measurement around:

a) financials (profit and loss and balance sheet) on a monthly and year to date basis.

b) number of current customers and those that have used us over the past 12 months.

c) what is the current number of leads per month.

d) what is the conversion rate from lead to sale (measured over time).
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e) what is the average spend per customer over the previous 3 months.

f) what is the debt level, how many creditors, debtors.

g) team members - how many, how are they going?


Ideally prepare and compare all of this with last year's data. What is this really telling you?

Is business getting better or worse for you?




Step 2 In Writing a Strategic Business Plan - Analyse Your Sales and Market


Break up your total sales into product groups or specific products or services. Compared to the previous year are sales getting better or worse?

The next step is to break this data down into what types or groups of customers (the demographic). In other word who are your purchasers for each product and overall?

In most enterprises, 80% of sales come from 20% of customers. So who are your 20%?

Where are they and how do we attract more of them?


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Step 3 In Writing a Strategic Business Plan - SWOT Analysis and Write the Plan



SWOT is an acronym for Strengths (of the business), Weaknesses (of the business), Opportunities (of the market) and Threats (of competition and the market overall).

This is a perfect time to SWOT after completing steps 1 and 2.



Writing the plan becomes easier if you have completed all the steps so far.

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The plan itself should included

Vision for the future (3-5 year goals)

b) New products/ services strategies over time - what will we do?

c) Marketing strategy for lead generation, repeat business strategy and increasing the average spend strategy.

d) financial targets and strategy

e) sales strategy - what sales and conversion strategy and call plans?

f) Systems / Policies and Procedures: What new technology is required over time? Make a list of technology, accounting, customer service, measuring and review strategies to improve.

g) Team: How will you build a great team? What needs to improve? What is the communication between all of you like? How will you improve this?


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