Here's a rather simple outline to help you write an annual business plan – sort of a "plan for planning:" Answer the following questions:
1. Where do we want to go?
2. How are we going to get there?
3. Who is going to help us get there?
4. How much will it cost? Any business owner can follow that outline. It forces him / her to answer with simple replies.
Let's look at each question –
1. Where do we want to go? In other words, what is your annual goal, simply simply? Both in revenue (dollar amount) and in number of sales, or number of new accounts?
2. How are we going to get there? Increase advertising, get better sales and service training, add x-number of salespeople, etc. Get specific here – break your goal into monthly, and weekly 'baby' goals, which are much less intimidating than the big annual one.
3. Who is going to help us get there? Now the business owner can look at past performance and results and start writing a plan that says: interview and select an ad agency, identify and send people to training, identify and get rid of poor or non-performers and hire a combination of new, young and older, experienced salespeople.
4. How much will it cost? Now it is a lot easier for you to pull together your budget for the next year. Examine current expenses, cut where results have been disappointing, figure new people costs, etc.
The important thing about writing this plan is to keep it simple. It's important that this be a document that you can pull out and review every month, to see if things are on track, or if maybe you should change track alt unless something is not working the way you hoped. Happy planning!
