I am in business to make a HUGE profit and grow my wealth. When I wanted to fix my business I tried everything, including reading trade magazines, attending seminars, getting active in industry associations, hiring coaches and consultants, listening to tapes, and reading books. The size of the plan will also depend on the nature of your business and your reason for writing the plan. And many of them share certain objectives as well, such as raising money or persuading a partner to join the firm.
The future beyond tomorrow
A
square foot of
a coupon represents a sum of money spent in the store--perhaps one dollar. Give
out small prizes
like gift certificates to lunch or dinner, tickets to ball games, t-shirts, tools, or happy face stickers. Say
you increase your
projected market share by 1 percent here, reduce expected costs by 2 percent there, and lower your estimate of required startup capital by a few percentage points as well. But
you can also
offer your expertise, distribution channels, location, contacts, customer base, sales force, engineering talent, management skills, excess line of credit, financial strength, or banking connections.
Taking care of your Strategy team
You
can also use
bulletin boards or company newsletters to publish smaller sections of your plan, such as your mission statement or some details of financial objectives and how you re progressing. Competitive
advantage is what
makes you different from, and better than, your competition. But
the key word
is honestly. You certainly shouldn t play down your strengths in a plan, but don t try to hide your weaknesses either. You're
in business to
make a profit, not to work hard for little or no reward.
How long have they been in operation?
It
is an authority-based
model in which managers solicit input from the affected before making decisions. Your
tone of voice
is the way you communicate your message and the language you use through different platforms and channels. By
replacing yourself with
operational production systems, you'll have time to buy your own building, seek better customers, look for profitable accounts, find better people, and seek strategic business opportunities. For
instance, the best
time to start a business could be when the economy is booming, because people are in a strong buying mode.
Determine which manager is best for your particular needs
In
marketing, we use
the term mass markets and niche markets to describe how broad or specific the group of people we are trying to reach to sell our product or service is. The
right or the
wrong man at the head of a great business interest means the making or the unmaking of fortunes for the stockholders. You
have little chance
of fooling one of them with an overly optimistic or even downright dishonest plan. Debt
capital is obtained
by borrowing money.
Should Research and Development Be Your Primary Focus?
If
you have many
equity investors coupled with a pile of creditors, this can get pretty complicated. Well,
there you have
it: the latest and deepest thinking from a sample of professional investors. And
in each
of these two houses I was told that 'of course, if the right sort of a young man came along who could tell us something about our business we did not already know, we should not let him slip through our fingers. Limit
your alterations from
one plan to another to modifying the emphasis of the information you present.