Without a business development plan, your business will never be as healthy as it could be and may even suffer because of it. Many small business owners don’t do the necessary business planning because they simply can’t find the time. If you think about it, how many times have you thought you should sit down and do some planning – and yet you’re too busy taking care of your business!
Business planning doesn’t have to be time-consuming, you can achieve what you need to in a couple of three-hour sessions. In these sessions, you can successfully put together the basics of your business development plan, which will set your business up well for the coming year.
Preparing for your business development plan
Set aside time on two different occasions for your business planning sessions. You don’t need to do it on consecutive days – but it should be fairly close in time. You can do it up to a week apart, remember this needs to suit you.
If you prefer to work within a group and bounce ideas off each other, then get together with your business partners or like-minded individuals who also own their own small business. Your brainstorming sessions will be made easier with input from other people and they’ll also be more fun! Make sure to keep your planning group small enough so that each person can contribute equally.
Business development plan session 1: Revision and evaluation
1. Revisit the vision statement
Your business development planning begins with your vision statement. It is the starting point of your session and serves as the core of your inspiration and motivation.
Do you see yourself having so much business that you need to hire help? Trebling your sales? Becoming locally renowned as the best business in your field? Expanding into a franchise operation? Give your imagination free rein!
It’s important to ask yourself what you would want your business to be like in one, three, and five years. Articulate your business vision for each of these periods and write out your three business vision statements.
Don’t hesitate to create a business vision statement that expresses what you want your business to be and what you want to get out of it. Remember that the vision statement is for you alone and not for your customers or clients.
2. Evaluate your business
The second step of your plan involves examining the current position of your business. Firstly you need to ask yourself: What are your business’s three best strengths right now? And what are your three areas of weakness?
Once you’ve done this then you need to relate these strengths and weaknesses to your vision statement for the upcoming year. How will your three identified strengths get you closer to where you want to be next year? And how will the three weaknesses hold you back?
Think about these questions and write down the three aspects of your business that you feel need the most concentration in terms of achieving your vision statement for the year ahead.
For example, suppose your business vision statement is to treble your sales for the next year and get your product nationally known. Suppose, too, that your strengths are the attributes of your product (people who use it believe it’s a superior product), your customer base (the product is well-positioned locally and you do a lot of repeat business), and your distribution system (you have no problem filling orders or having your product delivered to customers).
However, say that the weaknesses of your business are that it doesn’t attract a large number of new customers, the product isn’t known outside the local area, and your marketing efforts aren’t working.
Examining and comparing these to the vision statement for next year, you came up with the following important aspects: Salesforce, PR, and marketing.
Business development plan session 2: Priorities, actions, and goals
Now that you know where you want to go, you need to figure out how you’re going to get there. You need to create a practical action plan that your small business can implement in the next year.
3. Set your priorities
In the example in the first session, the three aspects of the business that are the most important in terms of achieving the vision were closely related. Yours might not be and that’s ok. Look at the three aspects you’ve chosen and rate them from most important to least important.
4. Brainstorm actions
Focus on your top one or two priorities and ask yourself: what can you do to achieve these priorities? Let your mind list all the possibilities, no matter how impractical they may seem. Here’s where brainstorming in a group could help as someone else could come up with an idea that never even occurred to you!
For example, if you set your priorities to marketing and PR, then you could brainstorm all the actions that it would take to improve these areas. Resulting in an improvement in marketing and PR efforts, trebling sales, and getting your product nationally known. A list of ideas could include:
- Set up a website
- Send press releases regularly
- Do something unique or outrageous that would receive national coverage
- Hire a public relations expert
- Create a marketing plan
- Create a mailing campaign that would send your customers product samples
- Pay to have the name of your business on a blimp
- Buy ads in national magazines, social engines or social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter
This is a partial list but this is enough to give you an idea. The important thins at the brainstorming stage is to record all your ideas without prejudging or rejecting any of them. The most far-fetched idea could be the start of your very best idea!
5. Organise your actions
This is the stage of your business development plan where you shape your ideas into an action plan. Firstly you need to go over your list of actions and put checkmarks by the ideas you think are good, question marks by the ones you are doubtful of, and draw lines through the ones you think are unworkable or silly.
Now examine the ‘good’ ideas and see if you can find any similarities or themes. If you can, then group these ideas accordingly.
6. Set your goals
Use the check marked items or groups of themed items to create your action goals. The secret of successful goal setting is to bring together the action you’re going to take and the timeline to your goal. Use the formula of: ‘I will (specific goal) BY (specific actions I will follow to accomplish the goal) BY (time)’.
For example, an actionable goal could be: ‘I will get my product known nationally BY creating a marketing plan BY (a date three months from now).’
Make sure not to skip the dates! These are important to both spur you into action and to give you a way to evaluate your progress.
7. Plan how and when to evaluate your progress
You are now ready to implement your action plan – but there’s one more thing you need to do. You need to plan how and when to evaluate your progress so you can keep up with your business development plan.
The dates built into the goals are helpful but you also need to build time for reviewing your progress on your action plan into your timetable. Decide what will work best for you and if you’ll review your business plan progress once a week, month, or even every three months. You can even start each day with a business planning session to keep your goals front and centre in your mind.
Pick your dates now and record them with reminders in your chosen scheduling system. Set aside anything from 20 to 60 minutes to complete this evaluation. You can also choose to do your evaluation with a small group of people so they can provide feedback as well. It’s always useful to get more input when amending goals.
Make it happen
There’s only one thing left to do – put your action into a plan! Hopefully, these two business development plan sessions will get you fired up and ready to start working on making your vision statement happen.