Business Planning Considerations: Timing Your Expenses and Income
Part of a great business plan is properly timed expenses and income. How you expect to make money is one part of your business model, but when you expect the money to roll in is also an important part [more…]
Business Planning Considerations: How to Generate and Collect Revenue
In the simplest plan’s business model, your business makes a product or provides a service, sells it to a customer, and collects revenue directly. You might collect revenue on the spot, or you might sell [more…]
Business Planning Considerations: Pricing and Cost Control Strategies
Pricing has always been a major business planning tool. Its importance is even greater in a recessionary economy. A chief concern of any business is how to control costs, which have a huge impact on your [more…]
How to Define Your Business Model
When management-types ask “So what’s your business model?”, they really want an answer to a much more direct and basic question: “How do you plan to make money?” Your business model is the key to your [more…]
Business Planning Considerations: How Will the Company Grow?
Does your business plan include how you intend to grow your company? Before you answer that question, review your goals and objectives. Chances are good that they lay the groundwork for growing your business [more…]
How to Outline an Exit Strategy in Your Business Plan
It may surprise you to hear that you should give space in your business plan to a description of your exit strategy — the plan for how you’ll personally leave your business at some point in the future [more…]
Business Planning Considerations: Industry Conditions and Forecasts
As you write your business plan, you need to have a clear sense of the conditions and forecasts your industry faces, and to assess how well your business is configured to adapt and succeed in the environment [more…]
Business Planning Considerations: Entry Barriers and Obstacles
An important step in planning and assessing your business environment is to understand what kinds of obstacles — known as entry barriers — challenge new contenders in your industry. If the barriers are [more…]
Where to Get Research Assistance for Your Business Plan
If your business plan research requires questionnaires, focus groups, or phone or in-person interviews, consider bringing in specialists to help you maintain objectivity and convey professionalism throughout [more…]
Fine-Tune Your Business Plan’s Customer Profile
Create an accurate customer profile for your business plan so you know exactly who your customers are. When developing your business plan and directing your company’s business activities, customer knowledge [more…]
How to Describe Your Business Plan’s Ideal Customer
Every customer is important to your business, but the truth is that some are more important than others, and a precious few are absolutely essential. Your business plan should reflect that distinction. [more…]
Business Planning Considerations: Segment Customers into Buyer Groups
By determining which customers share similar interests and buying habits in your business plan, you can target offerings to groups of people who respond in similar ways. [more…]
Business Planning Considerations: Doing Business with Business (B2B) Customers
If you have a business-to-business company, include a detailed description of the ideal client in your business plan. B2Bis shorthand for the great contingent of businesses that sell to other businesses [more…]
Business Planning Tips for Researching Competitors
If the plan for your business is to open or expand a gift shop on Main Street, scoping out your competition isn’t difficult. You can browse through neighboring shops that cater to the same kinds of customers [more…]
Identify Stealth Competitors in Your Business Plan
When developing a business plan, you can usually spot your direct competitors pretty easily. They look a lot like you, offer similar products or services, and go after the same customers and market areas [more…]
Keep Your Business Planning One Step Ahead of the Competition
As you create your business plan, keep in mind the strongest competitive advantage held by your business and by each of your major competitors. Most likely, your competitors’ next moves will build on their [more…]
Use Your Business Plan to Chart Your Company’s Future
Business plans serve three purposes: to lay the groundwork for new enterprises as they get up and running, to guide successful businesses as they seek to achieve new heights, and to help struggling businesses [more…]
Use Your Business Plan to Generate Growth
The objective of a business plan is always the same: to acquire customers and to generate revenue and profit. The variables are how your business will grow — and how big you want it to get. Think through [more…]
How to Identify Opportunities and Threats in Business Planning
After you have assessed your company’s strengths and weaknesses as part of the business planning process, look for external forces that can affect the destiny of your business. These changes include [more…]
How to Define Customers in Your Business Plan
Without enough customers, you don’t have a business at all, so spend time when developing your business plan to understand who your customers are, what makes them tick, and exactly what they want from [more…]
Business Planning: Analyze Your Market Situation
Your business marketing plan should always include a market analysis, or snapshot of your marketing arena. The market analysis presents what you know about the size, dynamics, and trends of your market [more…]
Develop an Elevator Speech for Your Business Plan
When you’re in business, you need to be ready to talk about your business or business plan at any moment with an answer to the question, “So what do you do?” Marketers and investors call your response [more…]
Enhance Your Business Plan with Research and Development
A critical element of business planning, research and development, or R&D, refers to your ability to gain knowledge in order to design, develop and enhance your product, services, technologies, or processes [more…]
How to Define Operations in Your Business Plan
In the lineup of key business capabilities in your business plan, the term operations describes the processes and resources that you use to produce the highest quality products or services as efficiently [more…]
How to Define Organizational Structure in Your Business Plan
By defining your organizational structure in your business plan, you define the relationship of employees to one another — who reports to whom, for example. You also define each employee’s access to important [more…]
