Writing a Small Business Plan is a Necessity for Your Business Success

Telling business owners that they must write their small business plan to enable their success is usually met with as much enthusiasm as announcing it’s time to go for that annual dental check-up (my apologies to all the dentists reading this).

In other words, planning is probably on most small business owners’ least favorite things to-do list. This is likely because most small business owners are do-ers, not planners.

However, planning – in all its forms – is an integral part of small business success and it must be done.

Planning includes writing

• a small business plan (and perhaps growing that plan into a strategic business plan);
• a strategic marketing plan;
• a new business plan – for small business startup (which is different than writing a business plan for an existing business);
• a new product development plan;
• a marketing research plan;
• a customer service and/or customer centric plan;
• a human resources plan;
• a business continuity plan;
• a scenario plan and scenario analysis;
• a risk management plan;
• a safety checklist plan;
• an environmental plan;
• a business exit strategy or succession plan;
• a sales plan;
• a business operations plan;
• a capital expenditures plan;
• a business financial plan (including income statements, project budgets, cash flow projections, analysis of financial ratios );
• and more.

This long list of plans to write can be overwhelming. So, use a business plan outline to start with a small and reasonable approach.

Write your small business plan as an expandable document. Ensure that your plan includes clear goals and objectives and how you will achieve them. Add other sections as you have time and/or as you need to (to manage your business).

If you asked business owners for a business plan definition, you would likely get a variety of responses. There really is no one answer; however from a small business perspective think about your small business plan as a road map that directs you and your business in the direction you plan to go.

Following a simple business plan outline will result in a plan of about 12 pages. Creating a more comprehensive plan that focuses on strategic marketing plan elements or strategic consideration of a small business startup or a new product introduction or a merger will take more time and effort but will help you to focus on managing your business.

The common reaction once your business plan is written is to congratulate yourself on a job well done and completed and file the plan away!

• Do not let your small business plan become a dust collector.

• Use it. Build your key performance indicators (to measure business performance) and then assess your progress against your plan or plans.

• Share it with employees. Build the goals and objectives into their performance evaluations.

• Share a limited amount of information from your plan with your customers (like how your business is being designed and developed to become customer centric – only do this if you are truly committed and have begun to make some progress that you can point to).

• Share a limited amount of information from your plan with your suppliers (like how you’re looking for the most environmentally friendly supplies available and how you’re willing to reduce your number of suppliers if you can increase the amount of environmental supplies from one source).

Once you’ve developed your small business plan, ensure that you update it at least once a year (more often if you working in a quickly changing environment). Then begin to add some of the other plans listed above to fold into your overall business plan.

Planning is important to your business because what you plan, you can manage.

Unplanned events, or surprises, are often not happy occurrences but something that will require you to shift your focus from running your small business, to putting out fires.

Return from Small Business Plan to More For Small Business.