Business owners have told me they have never needed their business plan and it has just sat on the desk for years doing nothing.
This just shows that they have not understood the reasoning behind the plan in the firstplace.
1. Writing the plan is the essential part of its purpose
Once the plan is written, its work in the main, has been done. By writing your business plan you are required to have thought about key processes in your business. Thinking about them enables you to make decisions now about how you will respond in the future. In other words, you are reducing the numbers of ‘fires’ you will face without having written your plan.
2. To write the plan, you must have done some research
Thinking about your business in its component parts will raise many questions that you are unsure about. This will drive you to try and find the answer by doing your own research.
This research will uncover any potential problems that you will miss if you start by making sales, and not spend time developing your business plan.
By looking at your competitors and customers in the process of researching your business plan without the rush of making sales, you will see warnings like;
A new competitor has entered the market
Sales are declining and you disnt know why, but now you do
The government is going to change your industry in July next year and you need to plan for the changes now
Mobile technology is changing the face of business, and you found new ways of meeting that demand
3. Developing your plan is like seeing inside your business
The process of writing the plan is more important than if you refer to it every month. The act of researching and writing your plan will expose you to all the necessary functions and processes that are required to run a successful business.
By taking the time to really look at your products and services in detail you will see things like;
How long it really takes to make a single product
What pricing strategy will work the best for you
A better way to add value or quality to your product
Something important that your competitors have not seen
What your customer is really buying from you
At this point, you cannot tell me that your business would not benefit from having the answers to these questions?
4. The Greatest protection of all
As they say, advance knowledge of something, is great power indeed. Well your business plan and its process of development gives you that advance knowledge. While your competitors are rushing to get their product into the market, your time spent on your business plan has shown you that the market will shift in six months and you start aiming at that market space instead.
Even if you leave your completed plan collecting dust, the knowledge gained in writing it, has already helped in many small ways. Think about all the problems you may have had this year, and I would bet that having done a plan would have detected many of them beforehand.
What are you waiting for, start your plan before your market shifts again?
Information supplied by Paul Baker
Over twenty years of business development & change management strategies successfully used in National organisations across Australia. The focus is on continuous improvement of business systems to stimulate growth through our principles of Initiate, Inspire, Innovate.
Customer-centric focus using our extensive experience in consumer behaviour and business process operations to find ways to help business owners manage their organisations.