RATIONALE:
Once you are successfully through the first two "assessment" Steps (Personal/Professional and Business Idea), the idea of owning and running your own business begins to get more serious. This could happen! So it is time to get serious about planning. The adage that "failing to plan is planning to fail" appears to be as appropriate for business as it does for many other walks of life. While hard figures are hard to come by, research studies conducted by various groups suggest that the majority of businesses do very little planning. On the other hand, out of the less than 10% of businesses that do survive after 10 years, the majority of them have engaged in significant planning at some point along the way. Could there be a correlation here? By not addressing the many variables that go into launching and sustaining a successful small business, the owner is leaving a great deal of their potential success in the hands of fate. Judging by the failure statistics of small businesses, would you want to be left in those hands?

This Step on BUSINESS PLAN DEVELOPMENT is the next logical link towards the chain of small business success as it begins the primary planning phase of the BEST's Six Steps to Small Business Success.

SPECIFIC PRODUCTS: (44 pages, Exercises, Readings, Forms, Control Processes)

1. Business Plan Writing System: (Reading, Exercises)
   This Step approaches the development of a business plan from a comprehensive perspective. A business plan can be used for a number of purposes internal and external to the business. Experience has proven that an initial comprehensive business plan can be customized for any eventual audience in the future and at the same time be a great hedge against the inevitable surprises that typically seem to show up when you least want or expect them. The entirety of Step 3 is contained in a single but complete product, the Business Plan Writing System.

   The Business Plan Writing System has four (4) components

   

   1. The Pre-Business Plan Questionnaire starts off with a series of questions that address the key issues in each business plan category. The purpose of this component is to acquaint you with the kind of information that will be needed before the final plan can be written and to indicate where you may need to do further research.

   2. The Selling Of The Business Plan provides suggestions on the writing and presenting of the business plan. Specific features covered include the business plan's physical form, content, and presentation process.

   3. The Annotated Guidelines for a Business Plan component provides suggestions about what to provide in each section of the business plan. As discussed before, a comprehensive approach is highly recommended because this will enable the business plan to be used, with some customization, for a wide variety of audiences. The comprehensive business plan itself is a step-by-step process through all of the business plan components, using as a foundation the information generated by the pre-business plan questionnaire and other suggestions as appropriate.

      The sections of this Annotated Guidelines For A Business Plan include:

      • Title Page/Cover Sheet
      • Table of Contents
      • Executive Summary
      • Values/Vision/Mission Statement
      • Company Overview
      • Product/Service Plan
      • Marketing Analysis
      • Marketing Plan
      • Management or Administration Plan
      • Operations or Production Plan
      • Financial Plan
      • Appendices
      
      
      

   4. Business Plan Completion Monitoring Process allows you to keep track of the progress you are making towards the completion of the final business plan. Keeping up with the different elements of a business plan as you are writing them can sometimes prove difficult. It is usually not possible or even desirable to write the whole plan at a single sitting. Time is usually doled out in relatively small chunks, and new information is usually uncovered that requires the rewrite of sections that were thought to be complete. To aid this process, a monitoring process is also provided. (Form: Business Plan Completion Monitoring Process)

EXPECTED BENEFITS:

Upon completion of the BUSINESS PLAN DEVELOPMENT Step, you'll have an excellent road map for the foreseeable future of your business. Usually with only a few modifications, you'll also be able to customize the business plan to satisfy the requirement of any audience, whether they be external (e.g. investors/lenders) or internal (e.g. strategic planning).

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