Smart Small Business Planning Tips

Business Owners Need Simple Small Business Planning Disciplines to Impact Success

Entrepreneurs must develop a simple system for effective small business planning.

As a small business marketing consultant and expert focused on helping small businesses grow, one of the single biggest mistakes business owners make is overlooking the importance of effective small business planning.

Whenever I ask a small business owner what he wants for his business the answer is typically, “more business.”  When I ask the same person to sit down and review their plan the follow up response is too often, “I don’t have a plan.”

We all know the saying related to failing to plan.  “Fail to plan.  Plan to fail.”  And to a large extent this is very true when it comes to growing a small business within a limited budget.  Let’s face it, most small business owners don’t have the opportunity to get the SBA to fund a loan.  Home equity lines are a thing of the past.  And raising money from private investors is more like pulling teeth for the typical small business owner.

So the bottom line is most of us need to focus on impacting better sales results and growing out of cash flow.  And getting better results should start by developing your discipline for small business planning.  Here are three tips to help you develop an effective plan to impact the growth of your business.

1. Define your top three goals and focus on the most important first.  If impacting new business is your number one goal then you need to develop a tactical plan to do this.  Growing sales is a fairly common top goal for a list of three.  And in order to impact new sales you will need to define your ideal client or customer, your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) or value proposition in terms of what you really offer your customers.  In most of our business plans we help the client develop a clear vision and mission statement that is useful and meaningful.  Setting the intention is what counts here.

2. Define the top three to five action steps for each goal.  Again, business owners and entrepreneurs can be easily distracted because we tend to think in terms of the big picture.  But here it’s important to nail down the key action steps you will need to take to impact your top goals in a direct way.  For example, if you are with or without a sales team, what can you and the other sales people do specifically to generate more new business?  You can work to find new customers, impact a higher average sale, and get current or past customers to do more business with you.  This translates to doing small business planning action steps specific to direct sales and follow up activities such as sales calls, appointments, referral campaigns, etc.  You must also be very specific with your action steps and be careful to define who will do what and by a certain date.  I have found that involving the entire team to be part of the planning process is a great way to share your vision and get people to be willing to participate and contribute to achieving the goals you have as owner.

3. Put hard numbers into your plan for measure every aspect of total sales, expenses and your target net result usually stated in terms of gross profit or net income depending on the business.  Your top line number is an important one to focus on.  But if you’re not generating a fair profit you’re completely missing the point.  When it comes to allocating expenses for marketing and sales you absolutely have to measure results, learn and adapt your tactics.  This is true for investing in (yes, it’s an investment really) sales people, advertising, online marketing and anything you’re investing in to grow your business.

Small business planning is a crucial discipline that is often overlooked by small business owners.  It’s one way to work “on” the business as opposed to the typical demands of working “in” the business.  Setting realistic intentions, putting them into writing and sharing the planning process with your team is something we love to facilitate with our clients.  Most of our clients know they need to this to be successful, with or without us.  When we work in facilitation mode we offer a unique and proprietary business planning process that integrates the whole team and a new level of accountability, clarity and discipline.

An effective small business planning process is never ending.  It’s collaborative.  It’s fluid and dynamic so when you measure results and find you’re off target you can quickly learn and adapt.

How do you manage the planning aspect for your business?  What works well for you?  How do you involve your team?  We always appreciate your comments and suggestions here on the WealthNet Partners blog.

If you’re interested in having us work with you to facilitate your small business planning process please feel free to contact us.