Business Development

Develop a Business Plan

Creating a business plan is unnecessary for most businesses to get started and set the initial strategy. Business plan offers your business benefits that more than outweigh the investment of time:

·      The process of thinking and writing the plan provides clarity for the business.

·      If capital is needed from outside sources, investors want to see a plan that demonstrates a solid understanding and vision for the business.

·      The plan will help prioritize tasks that are most important.

·      With growth, the plan offers a common understanding of the vision to new leaders.

The business plan can be completed rather quickly. Keeping in mind who the intended audience is. The plan needs to be understandable, readable, and realistic.

Your besiness plan is organized into seven sub-plans or sections to be completed:

1.    Executive Summary

2.    Company Overview

3.    Business Description

4.    Market Analysis

5.    Operating Plan

6.    Marketing and Sales Plan

7.    Financial Plan

We guide you with reserch, gather and filling the information from the Company Overview to the Financial Plan, the writing would tell the story of the motivation and vision behind the business. Including what will make the business successful, how success will be achieved, and how success will be measured.

We help your organization keep the business plan updated in order to see progress, celebrate success, and adjust where issues arise. This is best done on a quarterly, if not monthly, basis.

Perform SWOT Analysis

We assess the business’ current environment’s strengths and weaknesses (internal) and opportunities and threats (external). This analysis is a good exercise to go through on an annual basis. After completing the analysis, provide thoughts on: how the business’ strengths can help maximize opportunities and minimize threats; how its weaknesses can slow the company’s ability to capitalize on the opportunities; and how the business’ weaknesses could expose it to threats.

Operating Plan

It is necessary to outline how the company currently and will continue to develop and maintain a loyal customer base. We help review and define management responsibilities with dates and budgets and making sure results can be tracked. What are the envisioned phases for future growth and the capabilities that need to be in place to realize growth?

The operating plan describes how the business works. Depending on the type of the business, important elements of this plan would include how the company will bring services to market and how it will support customers.  It is the logistics, technology, and basic blocking and tackling of the business.

Depending on the type of business, the following sections may or may not be necessary.  We only include what is needed.

·      Order fulfillment: Discover and describe the company’s procedures for delivering services to its customers. As a service company, determine how to keep track of the customer base, form of communications, and how best to manage sales and data.

·      Payment: We identify and describe the standard payment terms and the payment methods accepted. Describe the pricing plans (one-time service fees, hourly-based fees, markups, and any other fees) and any impact on cash flow.

·      Technology: Technology is used in many aspects of the business. It is critical to the business, whether it is part of the service offering or is fundamental to delivering a service, we locate and describe the key technologies used that are proprietary. If the business data (company or customer) is at risk, describe the data security plan in place, as well as any backup or recovery in the case of a disaster or outage.

·      Key customers: Identify any customers that are important to the success of the business due to a partnership, volume, or pathway to a new market. Also identify any customers who bring in more than 10% of the company’s revenues.

·      Key employees and organization: We establish unique skills or experiences that are required of the current team. Define any proprietary recruiting or training processes in place. List key employees that are necessary for success. Include an organization chart to support the organization.

·      Facilities: Form the type of business facility, whether leased, owned, or a shared business premises. Provide a listing of business locations, their purpose, and future plans for these facilities. If there are no facilities, and the business plans to buy or lease them, we will include them in the plan.

Marketing and Sales Plan

Promoting the business, whether through generating leads or traffic to a website or store, is one of the most important functions of any business. Publead set the plan and provide details of intended marketing of the business. Providing the key messages and channels used for generating leads and promoting the business, and describe any sales strategy.

·      Key messages:

Describe the key messages that will elevate services in the target customers’ eyes, including collateral or graphical images of some messages.

·      Marketing activities:

Which of the following promotion options provide the company the best chance of product recognition, qualified leads, store traffic, or appointments?

o   Media advertising (newspaper, magazine, television, radio)

o   Direct mail

o   Telephone solicitation

o   Seminars or business conferences

o   Joint advertising with other companies

o   Word of mouth or fixed signage

o   Digital marketing such as social media, email marketing, SEO, or blogging

o   Provide limited free consultations

o   Sponsor local sports teams or other community events

o   Give free informational talks either at the business offices or for local businesses offering complementary services

o   Do free work for local non-profits

·      Sales strategy:

What will be the sales approach? Will there be full-time commissioned sales people, contract sales, or another approach?

Financial Plan

Creating a financial plan is where all of the business planning comes together. Up to this point, the target market, target customers, and pricing have all been identified. These items, along with assumptions, will help estimate the company’s sales forecast. The other side of the business will be what expenses are expected. This is important on an ongoing basis to see when the business is profitable. It is also important to know what expenses will need to be funded before customer sales, or the cash they generate, is received.

At the financial plan would include estimated start-up costs and projected profit and loss, along with a summary of the assumptions being made with these projections. Assumptions should include initial and ongoing sales, along with the timing of these inflows.

Projected start-up costs:

Ongoing and one-time cost items that the business might need in order to open. Many businesses are paid on credit over time and do not have cash coming in immediately. It is necessary to make assumptions about how many months of recurring items, in addition to one-time expenses, to estimate when cash will begin to flow into the company. To begin with, the company will have to fund out of savings or an initial investment.

Projected profit and loss model:

The model with the projections of a business is forecasting for their first 12 months of operations. The data shows projected sales and gross profit. This is a good place to begin creating the company’s sales forecast. Next, itemizing the recurring expenses the business is projecting for the same months. These should be consistent with the estimated start-up costs. At the bottom of this model, it will be possible to see when the company is becoming profitable and what expense items are the most impactful to its profitability.