Strategic Business Planning for Success

Write a concise description of your business, including its structure and location. Refer to Gillian's neat version to help you structure this.

“The first page of your business plan will be an overview. It's going to give a basic understanding on what your company does and the structure of your company.”

Create a clear and concise mission statement that drives your business plan. Remember, "it's like trying to make plans to reach a goal without having the goal so make sure you don't skip this step"

“The next piece of information for your company's overview is your company's mission and this is really important because it's the driving force behind your business plan.”

Outline who is accountable for marketing, sales, operations, and finances, as Gillian describes.

“The final component of the overview page is your chart of accountability now this chart describes who is accountable for which of the major tasks involved in running the business.”

Define the problems your company solves and the results it creates for customers. Consider Gillian's question: "What problem does your company solve for your customers?"

“What problem does your company solve for your customers? What result does your company create for those customers?”

Detail your company's step-by-step plan for creating results for customers. This demonstrates how you're going to create the results you promise.

“What is your company's step by step plan for creating those results for the customer or what is your proprietary system?”

Explain why customers should choose you over the competition. Why should customers choose you over your competition?

“Why should your customers choose you over your competition?”

Define your target market by demographics and psychographics. Demographics include age, income, and location, whereas psychographics have to do with interests, desires, and fears.

“You'll want to define your target market by their Democrat and their psychographics demographics are attributes such as their age their income where they live whereas psychographics have to do with their interests their desires and their fears”

Explain how people will first learn about your brand and products. This strategy is how they discover you.

“Your visibility strategy which explains how people will first learn about your brand and about your products”

Explain how you will establish contact with people who discovered your brand. This is how you'll start building relationships.

“Your lead generation strategy which explains how you will establish contact with the people who have discovered your brand”

Explain how you're going to turn leads into paying customers. Essentially, this is your sales strategy.

“Your conversion strategy which is essentially your sales strategy explains how you're going to turn those leads that you've generated into paying customers”

Choose one primary product for your business's marketing message. This will help you structure your business around selling.

“I highly recommend that you choose just one a product as your business's primary product...determine what your main product is that you're going to Center your business's marketing message around”

Describe the result that your primary product creates. Hint: what your company sells is really the result the product creates, not the product itself.

“Describing the result that the product creates and here's a little hint what your company sells is really the result of the product creates not the product itself”

Describe the impact of the product on customers' lives. The impact is how the customer's life is affected by the *result* of the product creates.

“Describe the impact of the product create this is different than the result itself it's instead how the customers life is affected by the result of the product creates”

Define specific and measurable one-year goals. Make sure these are *measurable* goals!

“A good place to start would be to set some one-year goals”

Define specific and measurable five-year goals. "That way you know what you need to work on right now but you also know where you're aiming longer-term".

“Also some five-year goals that way you know what you need to work on right now but you also know where you're aiming longer-term”

Set metrics such as number of sales, total revenue, and profit. These will help you keep track of your progress.

“Some that I might recommend are number of sales total revenue profit impact in terms of the number of customers who you help”