Business Planning

5 Reasons You Need A Business Plan

Jul 20 2022

Do you own a small business and you feel frustrated that working hard every day is not getting you any closer to your goals?

If you started your business with a dream but now feel that you can’t even see the big picture, you need to read this.

Once you understand how a Business Plan can help you move from “just working hard” to a planned series of steps to grow your business, you will know how to remove the stress and frustration from your life. Read More

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Small Business Strategic Planning – Thinking Big

May 04 2022

A small business and strategic planning – is that chalk and cheese?

“I’m not even sure I need a business plan,” you say. “Do I really need to look at the big picture when I’m in the trenches?”

Well, that’s really up to you.

With a plan – any plan – you can envisage where you want to go, and then prepare steps to get there, rather than staying “in the trenches” and seeing what you get if you just work harder.

But first, let’s be clear about what is a strategic plan, and what the difference is between a strategic plan and a business plan.

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Growing Your Business With Your Annual Business Plan

Oct 05 2021

This is the third part of our series on growing your small business after establishing it from a startup. If you missed our first two articles on Growing Your Business By Measuring Everything and Growing Your Business With A Strategic Plan, you can catch up by clicking on the links.

This series of “Growing Your Business” follows our earlier series of blog posts on “Starting A Small Business“. If you want to catch up on how to start your own small business I will put the links to those articles at the end of this post.

In this post I will discuss how, having set a long-term strategic direction for your business to grow, through your Strategic Plan, you can cascade shorter-term goals and actions from the long term strategies year by year. This allows you to establish more detailed annual targets and actions, while at the same time ensuring that you stay true to course on the way to building the business of your vision.

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Growing Your Business With A Strategic Plan

Sep 28 2021

This is the second part of our series on growing your small business once your startup is established.

If you missed our series on how to start your own small business, you can go here to read the first article in that series.

The first part of this series on growing your small business can be found here.

This week, we are going to look at how preparing a long-term Strategic Plan as an overview of your strategic direction (where you want to end up and how you want to get there) can help you keep on track as you grow.

In your growth phase, you will meet many challenges and just as many decisions. Where will you open a store next? Who should you hire? Your supplier is going out of business – how do you choose a replacement? Should you rent your new premises or buy? Should you take on a partner?

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Growing Your Business – Measure Everything

Sep 21 2021

We have completed our series of blog posts on starting your small business, but if you have missed any of those articles and you want to teach yourself about the steps to take when you are starting a small business, I’ll put the links to those articles at the end of this post.

Today we are starting our series on growing your small business. Having started successfully, you are not turning your attention to growing your business.

One of your most important tasks of this stage is to set yourself milestones in the growth of your business so that you can recognise when you have reached various points of success. When should I hire more staff? When will reach a point in my profits when I can invest in more equipment? When do I start paying off my startup loan? When should I look to open a new store?

These are the types of questions you should identify answers to at the start of your growth so that you can recognise them and know what to do next.

This is why one of your most important tasks, other than writing your Strategic and Business Plans, is to measure everything.

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Increase your sales through a highly focused marketing plan!

SMART Marketing: In this book, the owners of a small business are led through the SMART Marketing 7 Step Process to produce a marketing plan targeted at their most desirable customers. Any business can use these principles and in 4 to 6 weeks implement a plan to get them through the door! Find out how...

The SMART Marketing Workbook: Companion to “SMART Marketing”, this workbook sets out the SMART Marketing process in 7 workshops for you and your staff to complete questionnaires and templates that at the end, form the marketing plan you need to sell your REAL product to your REAL customer! View now...

Category - Business Planning

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5 Reasons You Need A Business Plan

Small Business Strategic Planning – Thinking Big

Growing Your Business With Your Annual Business Plan

Growing Your Business With A Strategic Plan

Growing Your Business – Measure Everything