A Great Business Plan Strategy Will Charge Up Your Business For Success

Posted on May 30th, 2010 in Uncategorized by iptools  Tagged , , ,

Without a solid business plan strategy in place, no business plan can be complete. Similar to gas for your car, a solid strategy gives your business plan the fuel it needs to succeed.

A successful business plan strategy includes a plan for the following areas of your business:

Products and Services. Identify those products and services that perform the best for your company, and make sure you have a business plan strategy that is geared toward increasing sales in those areas. In addition, if you plan on developing any new products of services, include timetables to get them complete and identification of additional resources you might need.

Marketing. A marketing strategy is a key area to include in your business plan strategy. It should include an analysis of what your most profitable sources of marketing are, and how you plan to use advertising and marketing to expand your business in the coming year. This section is where you will also identify any new branding materials that will be necessary to meet the business plan strategy goals.

Operational and Employee Development. No strategy is complete without identifying the resources you will need to achieve it, most particularly human resources. Don’t leave any consultants or contractors out of these projections that will be necessary to achieve your goals.

Financial. No business plan strategy is complete without including your financial plan for getting there. Many believe wrongly that if you aren’t going to use your business plan to obtain outside financing from an angel investor or bank, that the financial portion is not necessary. However, this is not so. If you plan to finance your business plan strategy through business growth, it is even more critical to carefully analyze your cash flow projections to ensure they are accurate and support your business plans.

Finally, your business plan strategy should address where you are today with respect to the above areas, as well as your alternate plans in the event circumstances change from those expected.

Be sure to visit SmallBusinessAccountingBackroom.com to get many more resources to help you take your business plan strategy to the next level.

Marketing Business Plans

Whether small or large, all companies depend on marketing business plans. While corporations will have hundreds of pages of marketing business plans, smaller companies won’t have that many aspects to cover. These plans are not only informative as they represent a very important part of the business performance and they should be consulted on a regular basis, weekly or monthly to track results.

marketing business plan

Marketing business plans ought to cover one year in advance not more because market trends change in time and long-term future evolution is sometimes difficult to anticipate. The activity for the coming year will make the bulky part of the plan. Do not take this stage of business development lightly because you would make a huge mistake. Even for small companies, marketing business plans take weeks if not months to write.

Normally, the marketing business plans ought to remain private or secret within the company, even if their making requires the participation of many employees. Various departments have a part to play in the making of the plan, and this is the case with the finance department, the manufacturing, the supplies department and the marketing department, if any. The procedure is simpler for small companies. The good part of having a larger team contribute to the marketing business plans is the possibility to set achievable goals. And in the case of corporate marketing, the large number of marketing collaborations gives additional complexity to planning.

business marketing plan

Don’t make the confusion between overall business plans and marketing business plans, because even if they overlap, they are different. While the business plans represents the statement of your business vision, the marketing plan represents just the course of action required to reach some set goals. Moreover, the business plans include all sorts of detailed information on locations, staffing, administrative issues, strategic collaborations and more.

In a very narrow sense, marketing business plans seem like a waste of time. Yet, business activity should not be chaotic or conducted randomly. Having no destination in mind for your business journey is very risky and unprofitable. Running a business is very complex and without a step-by-step guide to action, your activities could easily go astray.

marketing business plans

Then, marketing business plans turn into solid ground the market bears the influence of transition or economic difficulties. Marketing business plans are incredibly valuable when staff changes occur. Written documents will remain a reminder of what actions have to be carried out. Every once in a while, the manager would have to go through the plans and see whether any adjustments are necessary or not.