Do-It-Yourself Business Plans

It's done.

I finally expanded the quick 10-Minute summary into a Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide to Business Plans.


Including:

• A clear concise 50-page Guide that describes all the requirements for a great Business Plan .


• Valuable ideas and information on the personal and strategic business decisions required before you start


• Recommended Templates for your Financial Projections


• A quick summary 10-Minute Guide to Business Plan basics


• An actual sample Business Plan that delivered results

Check it out at: http://www.diybusinessplan.com/DIYcompleteGUIDE.htm


Why Do-It-Yourself?


As a management consultant, I have often been hired to help with Business plans. (As an entrepreneur, I've also written a few of my own.) But if you hire someone, it still needs to be "your" plan. Nobody can go away and write it for you.


It needs to reflect the entrepreneur's passion, competence, knowledge and commitment to the business. A consultant can help with the planning process, words, numbers, and presentation, but investors, lenders and strategic partners need to know the entrepreneur behind the plan, not the consultant.


Learn how. And do it yourself.

Breaking even is hard to do

Checking my portfolio after reading the Canadian market was up 60% since March last year, I was disappointed to see that I was just barely above the original investment values before the crash.

That didn't seem fair as the crash of 2008-2009 was widely reported as knocking values down by only 40%. I was expecting to be up by more than that.

Unfortunately, it's a lesson in the inconvenient truth of basic arithmetic. If your original investment is down by 40%, then it has to come back by 67% to return to break even. Do the math.

I agree it doesn't seem fair, but that's how it works. Breaking even is hard to do.

Being concise

Finally we're writing the all important Executive Summary to the Business Plan. And, of course, it has to be concise.

(Most advice also says to write it last, but I think it's a good starting point as an outline of all the points you will cover in more detail - so I recommend that you do a draft Executive Summary first.)

But the final objective is prepare a brief (1 - 3 page) summary of the key points in your Business Plan, which might be a 20-page document or more, plus all the supporting data in appendices.

An excellent guide to the Executive Summary is available at Garage Technology Ventures (Garage.com). They emphasize that aside from being concise and still answering all the important questions the Executive Summary is primarily a selling tool for your Business Plan. It allows potential lenders, investors or strategic partners to quickly decide if they are interested in participating in your plan.

And even more important than the executive summary is that one sentence or paragraph in your cover letter or e-mail (or elevator pitch) that convinces them you may be onto something that could be a viable business.

Golden Glow of Winter Olympics 2010

This week it feels especially good to be Canadian. Sorry (which we apparently say too much), but I just cannot help myself.

Being Canadian is sufficient to feel proud and strong after being such successful hosts of the Winter Olympic Games and winning an all-time record 14 gold medals. I know I didn't do much more than watch and cheer, and clap with my red souvenir mitts, but I still feel part of the team that hosted the games and did so well in almost every event.

Proud to get to know so many new Canadian heroes.

So many who worked so long and hard for their few seconds, or their long ordeal over ice and snow, to prove they could be the best in the world. Such an inspiration to us all to persevere in pursuit of our own goals - however humble they may be.

Go Canada! There is more for us to accomplish and more of us to expose to the world.

Olympic lessons for entrepreneurs

Enjoy the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, but don't miss the opportunity to learn some lessons to help your business go for gold!

You can help your business to perform like an Olympic champion if you take these ideas from the Olympics as your inspiration:

• Have a four-year plan to achieve Olympic records



• Decide: Go for gold, or Quit.



• Learn from your losses



• Push your limits



• It's not for the money



• Don't cheat



• It's never too late

To see the full article visit: "Olympic Lessons for Entrepreneurs."

Be inspired to take your performance to Olympic heights.

Customer banned for life?

Occasionally it's necessary to refuse business and fire customers, but banned for life?

A complaining Tim Horton's customer in St. Andrews New Brunswick has received legal notice that he is no longer allowed on the premises of either location in town. Ouch! The former customer is now brewing his own decaf at home instead of using Tim Horton's drive through.

Now maybe the franchise owner had good reason for banning the customer - disruptive behaviour is not good for business and needs to be stopped in the best interest of both employees and customers. But managing the fallout can be a bigger challenge. The customer has become an international celebrity and champion for better customer service as the story gets played out by the media. The owner seems an unfriendly tyrant defending bad product and poor service. He certainly hasn't done a good job of the PR.

Maybe a more tactful, diplomatic resolution would have been less provocative and provided less fodder for the consumer to go public.

Recycle your Business Plan

I'm re-thinking my approach to Business Plans as I give another course on the subject at Concordia's Centre for Continuing Education. To consider alternative approaches, I recently reviewed other widely available resources on the Web.

All very un-inspiring. Not convincing in presenting the reasons to document a good Business Plan and entirely discouraging in describing the process for preparing one. Not likely to persuade any busy, results-oriented, documentation-challenged entrepreneur that it's a good idea and that they can do it for themselves.

So I have come to describe my own approach as "Recycling your Business Plan". That best describes the process I recommend of starting simple, then continuously reviewing, revising and expanding the plan to deal with more issues and answer more questions.

I'm reminded of the "million dollar napkin" that one entrepreneur boasts he used to start and guide his business simply by responding to the challenge to put it all on a restaurant napkin.Or the thousands of successful businesses that were launched "on the back of an envelope". It's a good start to your Business Plan.

Here are the steps I recommend to "recycle" your Business plan.

Remember the objective is to arrive at that communications document that confirms the business opportunity, describes your strategy and operating plans, and presents the financials to prove it will be a profitable and successful business.

Each step is a version of the Business plan that becomes more solid and detailed at each "recycling":

1. Describe the concept, business strategy, marketing slogan and target market on one page (or napkin, or envelope).


2. Confirm that your personal objectives, skills, personality, experience, contacts and knowledge are consistent with your business objectives.


3. Collect the market data on customers and competitors that confirms both the business opportunity and your ability to meet customer needs against competitive alternatives.


4. Do business feasibility test at your estimated sales volumes, pricing and operating costs to determine profitability. Calculate break-even sales and compare to your forecast.


5. Adjust sales forecasts and cost estimates to assure profitability.


6. Expand the financial analysis to include start-up costs, working capital required and the cash flow consequences to arrive at the financing required. How much, when, and how will it be recovered?


7. Document in more detail your business concept and strategy and all the operating plans for facilities, organisation, operations, marketing and sales. Add a section on the risks considered and your response to anything that may not go according to plan.


8. Complete the document and full set of financial projections against a checklist of the Business Plan requirements of your intended audience - management team, lenders, investors, strategic partners.


9. The next recycling step is to capture your Business Plan in a 2 - 3 page Executive Summary, in a 1-minute elevator pitch, and in a 10-slide PowerPoint for alternative presentation situations.


10. The final recycling process is to continuously refer to your Business Plan against operating results for each period. After review, check whether the plan and objectives are still valid, then revise plans or performance to achieve the business objectives.

That's it. A few simple steps that take you from a good idea to a well developed and fully documented Business Plan that will serve as a guide to management and will persuade others to invest in your plan.
Recycling is good.

Marketing, Sales or Customer Service?

Choices to be made or all part of a continuum?

I believe they are the three elements of a process required to build long-term valuable customer relationships. Which is the primary value proposition of most businesses. (Buy once and goodbye forever is not a business model that works for anybody. If you can find one, please let me know.)

The three elements defined:

1. Marketing - to build awareness, interest, attraction and generate customer initiated action in your direction.
2. Sales - converting interested prospects into qualified, buying customers.
3. Customer service - ensuring that each customer is a satisfied, repeat customer.

Each step has to be done consistently well for the results to be achieved. But a choice still has to be made - which element are you going to be best at? Will you win from competitors on marketing, sales, or customer service? You cannot be best at all three.

From my experience as a second tier OEM brand name in computer hardware, we knew that we couldn't possibly out-spend or out-market the multinationals, but we could out-sell them -one customer at a time.

Winning on customer service was also a challenge - it's expensive to compete on warranty terms and technical support. So we went back to salesmanship in the service department - coaching staff on persuading the customer to be reasonable, patient, and give us another order, please!

So take a look at your own performance in marketing, sales and customer service - then choose, focus and build one of them into your competitive weapon.

Even Seth gets it wrong sometimes

Seth Godin has to be the best at capturing concepts and then communicating them creatively.

You may know him best from his books, if you've heard of "The Purple Cow", "Survival is not Enough", "Meatball Sundae", "The Big Red Fez" or his original claim to fame -"Permission Marketing".

His Blog is also recommended reading for thoughtful inspiration on marketing and communications in general. (Click on the Blog link in the right margin.)

But even Seth Godin doesn't get it right all the time. And he admits it as he has re-issued his book "All Marketers are Liars" under the new title, (same contents) "All Marketers Tell Stories".

As he discovered, it may be a catchy title, but it is insulting and unappealing to the intended audience. Another lesson learned.

Good headlines are key

Maclean's magazine arrived in the mail today and it's hard not to notice the four catchy headlines for articles in this issue. Starting with:

"THE FLU SHOT SCREW-UP
Can we fix the vaccination plan before it's too late "

And across the top banner:

WHY CANADA NEEDS THE MONARCHY
(Even if it's these two)


Amiel: GOD HELP DOGS


INTERVIEW: CANADA VS.
GARY BETTMAN

Now that's an issue that will get read today.

Are your marketing communications that catchy? Maybe too much sensational yellow journalism for you? (No coincidence this issue had a yellow cover?)

Still it's a key principle of marketing that images and colours may catch the eye, but headlines capture attention. If you can also qualify the reader and get their interest, then you've really got it right this time.