A what-if plan can help you spot the increased needs for space, equipment, personnel, and other variables so you can make good decisions. After your spouse has filed for divorce or your kids have become strangers to you, the damage too often is done. Reinforce customer relationships by showing customers …

But the good news is that recessions serve as sort-out time (that is, they sort out the weak businesses from the strong ones and allow the strong ones to survive and grow). Your success depends as much upon what you are as upon what you know or do. Thus, the …

Conveying too much information in one advertisement, no matter how accurate or positive, can confuse the audience and weaken the message. In other words, the planning process itself makes you a far more capable manager and entrepreneur than you would be without it. Better to keep it to a couple …

People want to do business with people they know. Install an employee development and training program to motivate, recognize, appreciate, and train accountable and responsible employees and teams. Doing the work or selling your products and services is important, but calculating accurate direct costs is necessary to make a profit …

At this point, the small business owner is unable to manage everything by himself. In this information era, there is no need to guess. For example, I bet you drive to work the same way every day! A study at the University of Bath found that drivers drove measurably closer …

Do you anticipate showing your plan to suppliers to demonstrate that you are a worthy customer? Brand equity is the additional value that a brand name adds to an otherwise equivalent good or service, allowing the company to charge a higher price. The better an organisation becomes in understanding and …

Managers face the task of assembling various elements of the solutions that they need. So the first thing you had to do was find some. If you have ample experience, make it part of your selling proposition. Strategic allies usually come to you for something specific technology, distribution, complementary customer …

But by and large, generally speaking, the economy doesn't matter. Because positive feedback loops restore equilibrium in their own, often dramatic way, it is sometimes suggested that positive feedback loops occur within a larger, if not directly visible, negative feedback loop. Well, there you have it: the latest and deepest …

Love your passion, but know your business. After defining your exciting vision, specific results must be targeted and quantified. Umbrellas are a better choice than hot tubs. First-stage financing is usually used to set up full-scale production and market development.

Read complete contracts and documents

At the top of the list are public offerings of stock, which may cost several hundred thousand dollars in legal and accounting fees to put together and require a great deal of your own time and attention. Start by deciding which type of investment you are most comfortable with. When …

Customers are likely to be concerned about how well your respective strategies fit with theirs. This toxic behavior stops people from wanting to contribute more and become the best they can be. Competition from substitutes can occur at many levels, including product, ingredient, service, and convenience. It determines how it …

Most successful businesses were started by individuals who had clearly defined vision, purpose, and goals. Using heuristics to guide choices is effective when those heuristics are based on prior experience and are thus the result of experiential learning. Either they are the cheapest, the best at service, or the best …

She calculated that, when taking all paperwork into account, she spent roughly an hour on each transaction no matter how large or small. Are your people as efficient as they should be? Intellectual capital is proprietary information and in-house knowledge of technologies, materials, processes, and markets useful to an organization …

Defining clear boundaries is important to produce measurements, but setting boundaries in interdependent relationships and networks is always problematic, and to some extent, arbitrary. Of course, you don t have to use specific business plan software to write your plan. He knows he needs to do something different, let go …

Every employer would rather employ a busy man than an idle man. This gets out of control as your company grows from one to five, from fifteen to twenty-five people or more. Such difficulty makes it problematic to define and decide how created value is shared or should be shared …

If you are starting out without much money, choose something which is relatively low-cost per unit ' first because buying stock will cost you less, and second because in a tough economic climate people are reluctant to shell out for high-ticket items, at least not without carefully thinking about it first …

Many old-school bosses don't offer motivation, praise, recognition, or encouragement. Maybe you stand for the right to education for every child around the world, or are very sensitive to gender equality. Good trained help is a result of you making people a priority, building a great place to work, and …

This isn t to say that a down economy means you can t start a business. If you decide to invest in advertising, make sure it is targeted to customers who need your products and services. In order to improve production results, install simple productivity systems to help your managers …

At the highest executive levels, officers and board members may be concerned with the philosophical direction of the company, the organization s mission, and the meanings of the company s brand in the market. Purchasing debt is a bit of a misnomer: When one buys debt he or she does …

Hit off some social craze, or give a witty representation of some matter of passing interest. Organizational culture is the set of behaviors, norms, attitudes, priorities, and beliefs accepted by and within an organization. Each requires certain critical components for success components that may be irrelevant or even completely absent …

Entrepreneurs want to grow their companies and create an organized and systemized business that works, is management-run, has great loyal customers, makes a robust profit, and creates wealth and freedom. Second-stage financing is used to expand the operations of an already up-and-running enterprise, often through financing receivables, adding production capacity …

Depending on the makeup and size of the group, the issues to be discussed, and other factors, you may need to set rules for behavior, e.g., only two minutes per person, everyone in the room must be heard from, etc. Over 80 percent of all small business owners don't …

Successful entrepreneurs learned long ago that micromanaging people and processes doesn't result in much or enough profit. How? Maybe you are environmentally conscious, or buy fair trade products, or only eat organic food. Loan covenants, however, may require you to do all sorts of things, from setting a minimum amount …

Essentially, your brand is your identity. If you find that managing the day-to-day headaches of a small business isn't for you, perhaps a viable alternative would be to consider investing in someone else's small business ' assuming that you have the ability to identify potentially successful businesses. What expertise, skills, or …

This means that the colors and fonts you decide to use to create your visual identity should be consistent. These systems can include meetings, procurement procedures, order processing standards, inventory control, or checklists to ensure every activity is completed. People buy products to help them expedite a process. You can …

You can draw a crowd wherever there are people. But one cost that didn t seem especially variable went up sharply as business volume climbed. It is a document that tells the story of what you plan to do and how you plan to do it. Consensus or democratic decisions …

In business transactions, the values assigned to goods, services, or money may be economic, emotional, or both. But remember there is always room for the right man. I have had the opportunity to invest in many startup companies that have paid off very well. As a brand component, your voice …

Obviously, the customers avatars that you will create won t represent all members of your audience perfectly, but you should be aware of and look for commonalities among the members of your niche. A caricature of some political person or situation is always taking. Even the most modest new data …

A board of advisors is a less-formal entity. A few years ago science, as a factor in commerce, was little known and less appreciated. But for 95 percent of all companies, not being proactive toward serving customers has become standard operating procedure. If intermediaries did not exist, manufacturers would have …

But it s still just a bid, and you know what happens to bids in negotiations. It s easy to believe that a longer, more detailed plan is always better than a short, concise one. But the vast majority of retail stores are not destinations; customers do not travel specifically …

Seek advice. Hire an expert who can assist you throughout the transaction from acquisition, feasibility, escrow, and financing through leasing or sales. But without empowered people, you'll never grow your business beyond what you can control. Or via a market stall and also by mail order.

Financing a business requires …

Rather than spending all of your marketing money taking out ads or sending out brochures and flyers that say HIRE US! A business plan cannot guarantee that you will raise all the money you need at any given time, especially during the startup phase. That scenario has been determined by …

The accounting calculations and measurements are not a neutral model of the activated resources, but are the outcome of complex constellations of management choices. Even if your plan excites initial interest, it may receive only a few minutes of attention to begin with. Eventually, the consumer may face financial ruin …

Then now s the time to figure out why. The accounting figures advise the middle management to decide and act in a certain way. Readers don t necessarily want to see an attorney on staff. Each manager is dependent on other managers who assign the responsibilities, physical, financial and human …

Have a large bulletin board in front of your store, or near it, announcing your sales for the past week. Then trim the fat. These resources are the best place to start building your team. Make your own luck.

Whats more Important? Health and Safety or Sales

Consequently, the business deals governing the monetary flows between the involved actors are settled in a way that follows logics that do not necessarily reflect the actual contribution of the single actors in the joint value-creating process. Keep improving. Stephen Girard began on nothing, and became the greatest millionaire of …

Random ideas get random results. Consumers buy products at retail because they want or need them. Unhelpful comments with the sole intention of hurting shouldn t get even a slight bit of your attention they aren t worth it. Limit your alterations from one plan to another to modifying the …

I successfully use advertising in specific industry trade magazines to sell my books, speaking services, and business-owner boot camps. The point is, the quality of your plan may have little or nothing to do with your prospects for getting funded by a particular investor. If you find that managing the …

In some periods of the day you will have more custom than you can well attend to, while at other times you will have nothing to do. Also, in a large, highly layered organization, command decisions by upper management may seem irrelevant to lower-level employees. For example, a hotel pays …

An especially fast growing company with rapidly increasing sales might be chronically short of cash. What adjectives would you like people to use to describe you, your company, and your product? Specialisation in developed relationships enables participant companies to take advantage of more effective resource allocation. It s your unique …

Create a perception of value by letting customers know why they should hire your company or buy only from you. While mass marketing can be effective, the return on cost can be very low, as only a small percent of the audience actually needs or wants what you are selling …

Make it a priority to seek wealth-building opportunities. What are all those projections and forecasts for if they are not attempts to predict the future? It is usually better to wait for or seek another opportunity than to rush into the present opportunity without performing due diligence'whether buying a car …

When he sees you working, he will watch you. Most of your competitors won't invest enough, if anything, on this important part of their business. In my survey, I discovered that less than 30 percent of small business owners actually know their annual overhead budget. Include a homepage, business profile …

At the same time various problems, born of the new conditions, have arisen, such as the growth of large-scale production, the elimination of the small producer and the independent artisan, the growth of trusts, the rhythmic recurrence of speculative periods and industrial crises, the relations of labor and capital, and …

More than ever before, bankers are taking a closer look at the marketing plans embedded in business plans. The SBA website provides a very comprehensive overview of all its loan programs and provides answers to many typical questions. Although this is a diverse group, it is a finite one. They …

Offer them a report giving them the answers they need to solve their problem. When systems are used, problems become easy to identify, hard to overlook or hide, and can be addressed before it's too late. Stewart, who began business in a modest store, and who, in the latter part …

They are relentless and unbending and have to be paid whether you are selling five units or 100 units or even no units at all. Dealing with it may be as simple as merely including a statement to the effect that you foresee no significant liability issues arising from your …

Few things are more comforting to an investor than the knowledge that this investment s disbursement will be monitored regularly and carefully by an expert. A marketing program and sales system can generate a big return for a small investment. As you read such a document, you may make a …

Proactive operational systems are repeatable, standardized, written organizational methods, procedures, and guidelines. But don t be seduced. In an effort to get a plan written quickly to show a potential investor, you may find yourself cutting corners or leaving out vital information. No one has the exact same background and …

If your plan indicates that the business idea isn t sound, by all means look for errors. The geometry of a triangle is such that its sides are interdependent; one cannot alter one side without affecting the rest of the triangle. Then, briefly describe your ideal candidate. Suppliers, who naturally …