Business Planning

The Business Plan Process

Develop a Marketing Plan

A Marketing Plan will have the following common elements:

Review of Economic Situation

A short summary of how the anticipated economic situation will affect you and your major customers? Are they growing their shipping or cutting back? What are their prospects for the coming year? Will the government introduce any new measures that might affect your business or that of your customers? Are there legal, social or political developments that might affect your business?

Strengths & weaknesses

Carry out a S.W.O.T. analysis – consider your:
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats

This analysis is usually broken down into two segments:
Internal Analysis
These are factors that fall under your control such as:
• your Product Range
• your resources including personal capabilities
• your financial position
• your market positioning.

External Analysis
These are factors outside of your control such as:
• your customers
• your competitors
• environment
• government policy
• raw material prices

For example, when analysing your competitors, you should ask questions like these - how are they doing? Are they increasing their market share? Who are the improvers? Why? What are they doing better than you? Where are you likely to lose business? How much might be lost?
Other issues for a SWOT Analysis:

Margins - how can you improve your margins? Should you be concentrating on your better yielding business? (the ones with less work but better margins).

Costs – are you doing all you can do reduce your costs? Can you buy better? Are you using the leverage power your company has? Have you introduced all the cost recovery measures possible?

Customer Service – how are you perceived by the market? Where do you have to improve? When?

Standing - what is your company profile like? Does it need to be higher? Do you need to a company P.R. campaign?

Agents (if appropriate) – review all your agents. Who is performing? Why? Who is not performing? Why? What do you recommend be done about it? Is it you or them? Do they know what you expect of them?

Staff – what is your staffing situation? Are they trained sufficiently? If not, where do they need more training? When and by who? Internal or external? What external visits are needed/wanted/justified? What are your ‘Service Standards’? Define the deadlines for documentation, reporting, invoicing, for your department. These should be agreed by all your staff and clearly displayed as your department’s Service Standards.

Team Building – what are you planning to do to increase team spirit? When? Do you need other people involved?

Support – what do you need? From the Management? Administration? Finance? Sales/Marketing? Customer Service? Reception/Telephone?

What hardware/software do you need to function efficiently? What else restricts you from achieving the goals set? Are you and your staff competent in the use of the computer applications you are using? If not, define what you need.

Services – are there any new services you should be offering?

Growth Opportunities
From your SWOT analysis, you can make a list of opportunities where you can grow your business. These then need to be reviewed to see whether they are viable in terms of being worth the expenditure of time, effort, staff or capital.
You could set a target for a percentage increase in profit or turnover to grow your business. But you need to work out where you will gain this increase in business. Can you go through the prospects for each major customer and then work the total business increase? Or will the increase just happen as a natural growth of your business sector? Will you have to target some segments/customers to achieve this increase? Will you need to get new customers to achieve this increase? If so, who, how many and how? Will they be wholesale or retail? What other business do you need to achieve the target? Where are there opportunities to grow your business? Can you cope with the workload without compromising your service delivery?


Measurable objectives

Having established viable growth opportunities, the next step is to set down your objectives. As detailed in the Financial Section, all objectives should be SMART goals:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely
They should include target markets, promotional activities, target customers, trade fairs. If there are additional costs, like overseas travel, these should be specified.

Action Plan

An Action Plan is then developed detailing who will do what by when.
This can be then entered in the individual’s diary/scheduler or whatever time management system is used. It should include trips, training, functions, reviews, meetings, etc.
The final plan should be feasible and attainable and acceptable to everyone involved.




Budget

From the Objectives costing and the Action Plan, you will now be able to work out a realistic financial budget for your business for the next 12 months. The addition of the budget to the Marketing Plan sees the completion of your Business Plan. (See section on preparing Budgets under Financial Issues).

This is the same process as we follow to develop a Business Plan for a website - if you want more information just contact me