No
Business Owner Ever Wrote a Plan to Make Little or No Profit, Work Ridiculous Hours,
Stress Over Cash Flow, Employ people Who Cause Them Countless Headaches….
Those
Things Happen Because They Don’t Have a Plan!
No doubt,
when you started your business, you, along with countless others, were told the
importance of having a Business Plan and, yet, less than 5% of businesses have
a plan; why is that?
There tends
to be three types of business plan:
- The one you put together when you want your Bank to give you a loan. You know, the ones that never see the light of day when they have served their purpose. So they are not very useful when it comes to growing your business
- To attract investment into your organisation. These can be very useful, but once again have a tendency to get stored away and never see the light of day once the investment has been secured.
- A business improvement and growth plan that is tied to your life goals. After all, what is the point of putting yourself through the trials and tribulations of running a business if it is not going to help you achieve what it is you want for your life.
So, of the
three, one and two have their uses, but three is vital if you are going to
achieve the future you dream of.
How do you
put together a compelling business improvement and growth plan? You need to
start with the end in mind. One day, you will look to exit your business. A key
question is what will it look like when that day arrives?
- How many outlets/offices?
- What is the turnover/profits?
- How many people do you employ?
- How many hours are you working?
- What is the legacy you are leaving?
Of course,
on a more personal note, as a result of having your ideal business, what is the
lifestyle you are able to have for yourself and your family?
Once you are
clear on what the business needs to be achieving and you have a concrete future
date for this to be achieved, start to track back from that date to the present
moment. Along the way you need to be setting down markers/targets for where
your business needs to be at certain points along the journey. So let’s say you
have a ten year plan for your business, where does it need to be in 5 years?
Three years? 1 year? 90 days? Next week?
One bite at
time…And it is the same with planning a compelling vision for your business.
What I find works is to break your big plan down into bite sized chunks of 3
months. Then, every 3 months, evaluate; what were the big wins during this
quarter? What did I learn as a result of what I did/didn’t do this quarter?
What needs to happen in the next 3 months to move my business towards my
overall vision?
So what should be included in your quarterly
plan?
Because this
is an action plan geared towards business improvement, the plan should focus on
What is going to happen to achieve
the desired result. For instance, if your goal for the quarter were to grow
sales by 20%, you could achieve that by:
- Putting together a tested, measured and scripted sales system.
- Improve your sales skills by reading one Sales book per month making sure you have a strategy in place to implement what you learn.
- Have in place scripts to up-sell and cross-sell your products
Keep the
plan ‘skinny.’ It is better to achieve
2-3 goals than to have 101 uncompleted goals. Truth be known, it only takes a
couple of solid strategies (for instance any two of the ones above) to double
the sales in most businesses.
I recommend
that every business person should be spending at least 4 hours per week working
on their business. So the next step would be to timeline at least 4 hours every
week which will be dedicated to implementing the strategies from your plan.
Some of you
may be thinking where am I going to find 4 hours? Finding that 4 hours could
well be a worthy goal for the next quarter because you need to be asking what
is happening/not happening in your business that means that you cannot dedicate
4 hours to working on your business. For you to achieve your compelling vision,
at some stage you have to break the cycle of working every hour in your
business because you will just keep going round and round in circles. I have
asked many business owners, how many years have you been in business? To which
the reply may be 10 years. On further investigation, it turns out they have
been in business 1 year, but just lived it 10 times because every year has been
the same; they’ve neither grown nor expanded, made the same (or perhaps less)
profit each year, basically experiencing the business equivalent of groundhog
day! After ten years, you would hope to
have more to show for your efforts than simply to have maintained the status
quo of year 1 for 10 consecutive years!
Now, on a
weekly basis working from your plan, break down your goals into the tasks that
you will complete the following week during the 4 hours that you have put aside
to work on your business. An important point here is treat these 4 hours as
though you are meeting with your number 1 customer/client. You wouldn’t miss
that appointment would you? At the end
of the day, who is most important; you or your number 1 client? Achieving your
vision, growing your business living the life you want, will only ever be a
pipe dream if you keep cancelling appointments with yourself.
So there you
have it, how to put together a compelling business improvement and growth plan.
Simple, not necessarily easy.
If you would like to
learn more on this subject and indeed put together a plan so that you can
really ramp up the growth in your business throughout 2015 come along to our
Ultimate Planning Workshop click here. This will be your opportunity to work on your business instead of
in it, with a group of like-minded business owners.
On the
day you will receive:
- A 60 page workbook full of ideas, tools and nearly 500 proven strategies to help you overcome any challenge you are presently facing in your business.
- All the necessary templates to help you achieve your plan.
- A full day packed with ideas, strategies and motivation from 2 of the UK’s Top Business Coaches
- Tea, coffee and sticky buns and lunch provided
- The motivation to believe that you can achieve anything you want in your business and the knowledge on how to do it!
To grab your place
before your competition does click here
Thoughts:
“Productivity is never
an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence. Intelligent
planning and focused effort”…Paul J Meyer
“Never look back
unless you are planning to go that way”…Henry David Thoreau
“Success is blocked by
concentrating on it and planning for it…Success is shy – it won’t come out
while you’re watching…Tennessee Williams
“It pays to plan
ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark”…Anon
“Good fortune is what
happens when opportunity meets with planning”…Thomas Alva Edison
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Dedicated to your success
Kevin Business Performance Coach Our next Workshop 'Double Your Sales in 2015' is on Friday 21st November 2014 To Book Simply go to http://www.eventbrite.com/e/double-your-sales-in-2015-tickets-13756053727 "Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?" said Alice "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to" said the Cheshire cat. "I don't much care where..." said Alice. "Then it doesn't matter which way you go’ Telephone 0151 348 1202 / 07802 434 872 Growing Your Profit, Transforming Your Business, Changing Lives www.mpcforprofit.com |
