BUSINESS PLANNING

The Strategic Plan
The Marketing Plan
The Operational Plan
The Financial Plan
The Creative Planning

Why plan? It is the only way you can achieve the success you want!
"The amount of time spent planning a business, is directly related to the success of the business" (Harvard Study).
A good plan:
1. will get you where you want to go faster and cheaper than anything else you can do.
2. lets everyone know where the company is going, how it is going to get there and by when actions need to be done.
3. provides management with a reason for working together and focus about what they are suppose to do.
4. allows performance measurement.

Strategic Plan
This is the overall big picture. I found that the strategic plan gave our key management team a clear VISION of where we were going, which really helped when we were facing challenging periods. We could see that the current crisis was just a bump on the road in context of the whole journey.

Marketing Plan
This is so vital! It’s competitive out there, and we found that taking the time to plan exactly how we were going to drive growth, gave our teams better results over most other companies. The resulting FOCUS of the team paid off in huge growth, at less cost.

How are we positioning our products or services?
Who, exactly, is our market?
How do we reach them?
Pricing?
Competitive analysis.
Advertising.
Sales. Time line.

Operational Plan
Planning is very important, but means nothing if you do not implement well. Many people mistake being busy for productivity. In rent-a-wreck, we were growing so fast that we didn’t have time to be off priorities.
Who does what, by when?
How do all of the jobs fit together to reach the goals?
How is the team managed and motivated successfully?
Leadership.
Communication.
Measuring performance.
Rewards.

Financial Plan
How much cash do we need? And when? My companies were all fast growth, always on the edge of our resources, so we had to know our cash flow requirements – and control and manage it carefully.
How do we raise capital?
Equity or debt? Combinations of both?
Control of funds.

Creative Planning
This is a fun, positive process that examines all of the company’s possibilities. A process of prioritization and elimination occurs to what is actually achievable, given resources parameters.