All business should have a business plan, from the one-man band to the successful limited company. Once written, the plan should be referred to regularly and used as a tool to assess business performance.
The plan will tell you where you are looking to get to in your business and it will set out the strategies to get you there. It will act as a Sat Nav for your business.
The strategies represent the route that you will take and these may change over the journey.
You will need to measure the progress that you are taking and we recommend that for this purpose you use a One Page Business Plan. This will show if you if you are on track and highlight if you need to change anything.
A business plan should contain the following:
- A summary of what your business will look like when you have achieved what you want.
- A summary of where you are now in terms of your market place, products and services and customers.
- What your marketing strategies will be to attract the customers you want.
- Identification of your new customers
- Your pricing policies
- Details of you team – who are you looking to recruit and how are you going to train and appraise them
- Identify what systems are essential in your business
- What will your cash flow and profits look like?
- List of the actions which you will need to take
Finally, I would recommend that you review your plan every six months
