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lördag 18 augusti 2012

What Is a Business Plan

by Tim Berry

Business planning is about results. You need to make the contents of your plan match your purpose. Don’t accept a standard outline just because it’s there.

What is a business plan?

A business plan is any plan that works for a business to look ahead, allocate resources, focus on key points, and prepare for problems and opportunities.

Unfortunately, many people think of business plans only for starting a new business or applying for business loans. But they are also vital for running a business, whether or not the business needs new loans or new investments. Businesses need plans to optimize growth and development according to priorities.

What’s a startup plan?

A simple startup plan includes a summary, mission statement, keys to success, market analysis, and break-even analysis. This kind of plan is good for deciding whether or not to proceed with a plan, to tell if there is a business worth pursuing, but it is not enough to run a business with.

Is there a standard business plan?

A normal business plan (one that follows the advice of business experts) includes a standard set of elements, as shown below. Plan formats and outlines vary, but generally a plan will include components such as descriptions of the company, product or service, market, forecasts, management team, and financial analysis.

Your plan will depend on your specific situation. For example, description of the management team is very important for investors while financial history is most important for banks. However, if you’re developing a plan for internal use only, you may not need to include all the background details that you already know. Make your plan match its purpose.

What is most important in a plan?

It depends on the case, but usually it’s the cash flow analysis and specific implementation details.

    Cash flow is both vital to a company and hard to follow. Cash is usually misunderstood as profits, and they are different. Profits don’t guarantee cash in the bank. Lots of profitable companies go under because of cash flow problems. It just isn’t intuitive.
    Implementation details are what make things happen. Your brilliant strategies and beautifully formatted planning documents are just theory unless you assign responsibilities, with dates and budgets, follow up with those responsible, and track results. Business plans are really about getting results and improving your company.

Can you suggest a standard outline?

If you have the main components, the order doesn’t matter that much, but here’s the outline order we suggest in Business Plan Pro and LivePlan software:

1.    Executive Summary: Write this last. It’s just a page or two of highlights.
2. Company Description: Legal establishment, history, start-up plans, etc.
3.    Product or Service: Describe what you’re selling. Focus on customer benefits.
4. Market Analysis: You need to know your market, customer needs, where they are, how to reach them, etc.
5. Strategy and Implementation: Be specific. Include management responsibilities with dates and budget.
6. Management Team: Include backgrounds of key members of the team, personnel strategy, and details.
7.   Financial Plan: Include profit and loss, cash flow, balance sheet, break-even analysis, assumptions, business ratios, etc.

View an expanded business plan outline

We don’t recommend developing the plan in the same order you present it as a finished document. For example, although the Executive Summary comes as the first section of a business plan, we recommend writing it after everything else is done.

What can help me write a business plan?

It can be helpful to view real sample business plans to get ideas for your own business plan.

This free fill-in-the-blanks business plan template follows the format that is preferred by the SBA and lenders and can be a useful guide when writing your plan.

As mentioned before, reviewing a standard business plan outline can also be a good starting point.

If you are looking for additional help, a tool like LivePlan or Business Plan Pro is a good option.

Fresh Ideas for 2012

Fresh Ideas for 2012

As the economy improves, so are the odds of starting a successful new business. If you're looking for a great new business idea, here are ten we think will be hot in 2012. Our predictions are based on recent data, research and anecdotal evidence suggesting growth fields and big opportunities to start a new business.

onsdag 7 december 2011

Online Businesses

Various Opportunities For Running Profitable Online Businesses

Written by: Michelle Jayes

Having the right internet marketing applied to web sites is the key to having profitable online businesses. In this current economic nightmare, it is still very possible to build a successful business online either by affiliate marketing, or selling products or services direct. The internet is still growing at a rapid pace, and new technologies are being introduced that are bringing new people and even changing the way the net is used.

Furthermore, it is possible to affiliate market some of these newer devices and make money from them too. People are buying tablet PCs, smart phones such as the iphone or android, all of these are available for any entrepreneur to sell online.

However, this is beside the point. To have any chance of a successful online business, your web site needs to offer a solution to a problem, be optimized for the relevant keywords, be professional looking and content written in such a way that it really appeals to the consumer.

In essence, you would need to follow this process -

1. Define an area where a problem exists and people are needing a solution.

2. Search for a product that solves this problem.

3. Perform extensive keyword research, find keywords people are using to look for a solution and use keywords where you feel you have a chance of competing against.

4. Create a list of keywords and build a campaign around them. Build a web site and optimize it based on the keywords.

5. Place a strong call to action statement that links from your site to an affiliate site, or to whatever means you have of solving the problem eg contact information for the consumer to call you for you to provide a product or service.

6. Build backlinks to the site, by use of article marketing (again based on the keywords) or other means.

This forms the basics of any profitable online business - find a problem, define it, solve it, call to action. The key to online marketing though remains consistency, patience and determination. It is becoming more and more competitive, but new opportunities are always being created and arising.

Getting a new website off and running does take more effort now, and Google itself is growing in intelligence and now seeks pertinent, relevant and original content. The days of spamming Google with duplicate content in order to get back links appear to be a thing of the past, and it now requires originality.

For the true and honest marketer, this is great news because it means you stand a better chance of getting those sales. People have become wise to the old hammy methods of sales techniques, now they want honest and well written reviews or articles to solve their needs.

Earlier this year, Google launched a major update known as Google Panda. In it, it removed a lot of websites it considered spammy or unnecessary from its index. Google wants the best to be able to provide its customers (the searchers) with the best. After all, Google is a business itself and so it is always advisable to understand as best you can its requirements for a successful web site.

In essence, be true to your customer and you will reap the rewards and be one of the many profitable online businesses that exist out there.

måndag 5 december 2011

Easy Home Business Ideas Advice for Beginners

Most of us are tired with the 9-5 jobs as we feel they have stolen our freedom and joys of life and rendered our lives monotonous. For this reason and to enjoy more financial freedom, increasing number of people are trying out a number of independent business ideas. Not all those in this arena prove successful. However, home business ideas are worth trying since there are a number of success stories too. With extensive research, systematic planning and diligent involvement, you can make home business your cup of tea and succeed in achieving your most cherished dreams.

Home businesses afford a great deal of freedom and flexibility. By doing a home business, you are your own boss. However, hard working is never a compromise in anything that you do to succeed in life. The money you earn in home business certainly depends on the amount of time you spend and the hard work you spare. People are certainly capable of more than what they are achieving through a regular job and home businesses offer a solid platform them to prove their real worth. There are tonnes of home business ideas that you can get from the internet at the click of the mouse.

First and foremost, you must learn to invest on your capabilities. You need to ascertain what you are good at. For instance, if you are good at gardening, cooking or sewing, you can set up your own home business in one of these arenas. There are a number of people making cakes at homes and taking home delivery orders. Many people like to order for home made cakes since they taste better and meet their custom needs unlike the ones displayed at the cake shops. Sewing and embroidery are in good demand since people use embroidered clothes as coverings on soafas, tables, cushion seats and other furniture. Once you are able to prove your specialty in this line, you will be amazed to see yourself growing in popularity and earning good money.

In addition to selling your products, you can also sell your services by advertising online. Some of these freelance services in demand include accounts managment, writing, engineering and plumbing.

The success of home businesses depend on the quality of the products and pricing. By doing a home based business, you are able to supply good products at competitive prices since you need not have to invest on more employees and showrooms. In fact, many people like to buy home business products though they might be expensive on account of quality concerns. So, you can right now give a try and venture into an independent home business in your specialty line.