According to Dun & Bradstreet, a business data company, the primary cause of failure is lack of business planning. Business owners don’t plan to fail, rather they fail to plan, which causes them to fail. You may say you have planned but there are unique aspects of planning you may not know. This article pinpoints some aspects of business planning that are crucial for business survival and growth.
Product Planning
Did you start selling your product or service because somebody else started the same? Product planning involves critically mapping out your product and services, why you want to sell it, who you want to sell it, how you want to sell it and what revenue you will generate. This is very crucial to the growth of the business, both long-term and short-term.
People Planning
Where there is no structure, there is no business. Even if you start without the knowledge of the right structure, aim to learn. If your business is small, have a vision of how your team will be when you hit your revenue target. In starting out, you have to map out the structure, develop clear reporting lines, create job descriptions, develop simple reward and benefits templates and create key performance indicators for employees. This way, you get your team involved and you get appropriate results for the salaries you’re paying.
Marketing Planning
You should have a well-structured plan on how to market the products and services you offer while considering various factors such as the target audience, distribution channels, budget and so on. Marketing is an inevitable aspect of business growth. It is important to plan your marketing to avoid the temptation of splurging your advert budget. Ensure you map out everything, don’t leave anything to chance. For product businesses, a strong distribution channel is a lifeline. Tie all costs incurred in marketing to a goal and clearly define how this leads to business growth.
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Finance Planning
Having a financial plan is an important aspect of structuring your business. A solid financial plan helps you make informed decisions as regards the allocation of resources in running your business. You should have a financial structure to ensure your business continuity and seamless operations. You have to plan salaries, plan inflow, plan outflow, plan fixed costs; such as rent and plan your investment. Some businesses fail due to mismanagement of funds but this can be averted by developing a financial plan and sticking to it.
Crisis Planning
A pre-crisis management plan will outline how you and your team will respond to possible crises that may occur. It is unwise to assume that you wouldn’t need to crisis-proof your business because crises do not inform you before they happen. You can’t be caught off-guard.
A crisis is any activity that threatens the existence of a company. Unlike a conflict, a crisis involves life-threatening situations, lawsuits, media coverage and at times, protests. In any organization, crisis periods are delicate and can lead to the death of that entity. Only a few organizations survive certain crises. Pre-crisis management can also help you avoid certain crises. If a crisis ever occurs, having a crisis management plan can help you minimize damage and resume business operations as soon as possible.
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Project Planning
Project planning involves outlining your goals and objectives for a project you’re working on, identifying significant milestones, assigning responsibilities to members of your team and allocating resources for every stage involved.
Project planning is essential for business owners as it provides direction, facilitates resource allocation, ensures effective time management, mitigates risks, enhances communication and collaboration, controls costs, and enables performance tracking. There are various project management tools you can explore to make operations easier and faster. By investing time and effort into planning your projects as an entrepreneur, you are better positioned to achieve your goals and objectives while mitigating the risks that could be involved. Project planning also increases the likelihood of project success and optimizes business operations.
Business Growth Planning
A business growth plan is a framework that includes your objectives, strategies and plans for achieving your business growth goals which can be long-term or short-term.
Businesses grow in different phases. Some of the stages are seed, startup, growth, established, expansion, maturity, and exit. You must first understand what stage you are in growing your business as each stage comes with different challenges. They require different people and financial management strategies. The survival of your business heavily depends on navigating your stage of business growth correctly. Planning your business growth will help you measure your growth rate and discover strategies for scaling up.
Conclusion
Running a successful business requires a lot of work, one of which is adequate planning. As a business owner, it is important that you have plans that cover different aspects of growing your business and follow them up with diligent execution. At ThePush Consulting, we are experts at creating any of the plans listed above to help you accelerate your business. Click here to contact us.
