Placing Your Puzzle Pieces Together In Business: Every Piece Properly Placed Counts!

By Tracy Thomas

Whether you work at a startup or a business with a long track record of success, you’ll find fresh and new outlooks on how to boost sales with this guidebook.

Tracy Lee Thomas, a business consultant and founder of multiple companies, provides proven strategies for business owners and managers who think they’re doing everything right but who still find sales coming in below expectations. You’ll learn how to:

• develop a unique selling proposition;
• handle objections from prospects;
• create a marketing plan that works for you;
• write a winning phone script.

You’ll also learn the top ten tips to closing a sale, twelve tips for success, and how to make your customers’ experiences more enjoyable.

Filled with flow charts, executive summaries, and bulleted lists for easy review, this is an essential resource for owners, managers, and the salespeople that keep the business going. Turn customers into loyal brand ambassadors by Placing Your Puzzle Pieces Together in Business.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jan 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483423548

Book preview

services.

Chapter 1

Creating a Solid Business Plan

A business plan is a form of written communication that contains descriptions about the future of your business. It contains detailed answers to two critical questions – a) what do you plan to do in the future, and, b) how do you plan to do it. This essentially becomes a description of your (long and short-term) goals and the action steps you plan to take to achieve those goals.

In this essence, the primary function of a business plan is to function as a road map for a business – outlining goals and sketching out strategies to achieve them. However, the reasons why you must invest resources in creating a well thought out, and detailed business plan extend well beyond the primary functionality of the plan.

SAR – Solution-Action-Result. You need to create a solution, place that solution into action, and measure the results to enhance a specific system or area of business.

Here are 10 of the several other reasons why you should create a business plan –

To create a new business or grow an existing one

Write a business plan to outline the different steps in starting a new business – right from business goals and strategies to resource allocations, capitalization options and details of desired business outcomes. Similarly, use a business plan to prioritize strategies and allocate resources accordingly so that you can develop your existing business.

To develop new business partnerships

You can set definite targets for new partnerships using your business plan. You can also use the business plan to educate a prospective alliance of your business and its prospects.

To hire new employees

New employees are a new fixed cost and a business plan will help you decide whether or not you should hire. A business plan will also help you decide when to hire new employees. Do you have new strategies to implement that demand more manpower? What contribution do you want from the new employees? Is the value of those contributions more than the cost of hiring and keeping them?

To set defined goals for managers

Use your business plan to define immediate goals for the management and also strategize, organize and communicate different action points.

To deal with professionals

Parts of the business plan can be shared with accountants, attorneys and even business consultants, when need arises.

To share business objectives with your team

and/or significant others

You can share the vision, direction, goals and strategies with your employees, the management team and even your spouse or significant other. Parts of the business plan can be included in employee training as well.

To meet capitalization needs through investments and/or loans

Investors base their decisions upon the impression your business plan creates on them. Using a detailed business plan, you can attract investments from impressed investors. Similarly, business lenders review the business plan before qualifying an organization for a loan. A detailed business plan will help you lend support to your business loan application.

To make more well-informed business spending

Long term goals and strategies listed in the business plan will help you manage business expenses in a better way. For instance, should you buy a machinery altogether or rent it for a couple of months? Should you invest business time and resources in developing an application in-house, or outsource it to a third-party vendor? In fact decisions like renting of more office space can be based on the business plan. Do your future plans allow for an increase in fixed cost (by renting more space)?

For business valuation

A valuation expert will need to go through your business plan in order to calculate the worth of your business.

To sell the business

When it’s time to sell the business, you can use your business plan to educate prospective buyers of your business – what it does, how much it is worth and what things lie ahead of it. You can also use the plan to show why they should buy your business.

So what is a solid business plan?

A business can be compared to a puzzle with many pieces that have a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes. Each piece has to be looked at individually and placed accordingly. A business plan is the table or foundation on which a puzzle is placed together. A weak or unstable foundation will cause the puzzle to bend, crinkle, or even completely fall.

A solid business plan should convey your business goals, the strategies you’ll use to meet them, potential problems that may confront your business and ways to solve them, the organizational structure of your business (including titles and responsibilities), and finally, the amount of capital required to finance your venture and keep it going until it breaks even. It should allow you to monitor and measure results. It should be able to measure the concerns with your business systems, marketing strategies, profit centers, and other aspects of your business.

A solid business plan can be summarized as SAR, which stands for solution-action-result. A comprehensive and well-prepared business plan includes a solution for the different problems you can encounter, action points that outline how the solutions can be put to work for you and systems to measure results and make improvements.

Essentials of a Good Business Plan

A business plan is what converts a business idea into reality. A business idea should be unique and satisfy a specific need. So you need to identify the potential market that has this need first and then analyze the competition in the field. You also need to develop marketing and financial strategies. The lack of clearly defined objectives and strategies is usually the main cause of business failures. When you put the business plan on paper, it gives you a clear idea of the feasibility of the business.

Readers of your business plan, especially the people who can invest in your business (friends, family members, relatives and outside investors) are typically looking for four things in the plan. 1) An understanding of your business. 2) Factors that help them trust you. 3) Your financial confidence. And 4) a good return on their investment.

To create a good business plan, include the following components and ensure that each component addresses one or more of the four things mentioned above.

Executive Summary

Executive summary is without doubt, the most important part of a business plan and forms the base of an effective plan. The goal of this summary is to accurately describe the entire plan in brief. It must spell out the business idea, the industry it is related to, the money required, distribution of funds, and other important aspects of the detailed plan.

The executive summary must also make a case for your business idea – explaining why it will be successful and therefore, why investors must help you meet your capitalization needs. In addition, the executive summary must depict the strengths of your overall strategy. Here are a few things that must be included in the summary:

• Your mission statement (description of what your established company wants to achieve, the values it prizes and other details)

• Information about the company (when and why the company was set up, details about the founder(s), staff strength, industry and physical location(s) you cover)

• Growth highlights (graphs and charts that highlight your growth in terms of net profit or market share to name a few)

• Description of offerings (brief description of your products and services)

• Information about finances (especially useful if you are seeking financing currently. Include brief information about current investors and banks)

• Summary of future plans (a paragraph about where the business is headed)

For startups and new businesses that do not have the same amount of information that an established company has, the executive summary should focus on convincing readers that you have conducted thorough research, found pain points or service gaps in the market and have the capabilities of addressing them. Your background and experience should be spoken of in a lucrative manner to catch the attention of investors.

Business Description

Company description is essentially, the first section of your business plan that you will work on. This is because despite being the first page of the plan, an executive summary is written in the end. The business description section should define the need of your target customers that you aim to satisfy through the business. This section should give clear details about the business type, the sector, the proposed commencement date, legal structure, and where you see the business in the near future. The product and services on offer must be described in detail, along with their benefits and features that can counter the competition.

Market and Competition Analysis

You should describe the target market along with its history, size, opportunities, and growth rates. You must also identify any threats that are present. An adequate research must be performed utilizing statistics from market research reports, census data, chambers of commerce, and industry associations. You also need to identify the reasons why your target customers would be interested in your products or services.

You need to identify your competition, their share in the market, and their style of operation. You might think that you have come up with the most unique idea, but you could face competition from corners that you might not have thought of. So it is vital that you look deeply and analyze the threats posed by them. Also, look at those products that can be easily diversified to substitute what you are offering.

Marketing Plan

The marketing plan needs to be given enough importance and must be thought of during the business plan. Note down the different strategies and activities that you would undertake to promote your business. Ensure that you come up with something that is practical and economically feasible. It should define the strategy you would employ toward market analysis, sales, public relations, advertising, and customer service.

Operational Decisions

You need to take a clear stand with respect to the information technology that you would use, the geographic location of your business, and the employees you would need. You also need to decide whether you would rent or purchase your office space. Decide on your suppliers, outsourcing plans, production plans, and expansion plans. When you are clear on these aspects, you get a more realistic idea of your business.

Financial Goals

You need to set financial goals for your business so that it moves in the right direction. A forecast of about three to five years is ideal. The projection about the first year needs to be very clearly arrived at, including details such as initial investment, ratio of external funding, sources of revenue, collaterals offered for funds, and a clear plan to repay borrowing. You should provide a sales forecast, first year’s monthly cash flow patterns, and estimated costs and expected profit. When you prepare this, ensure that you base your assumption on facts and research.

Things to Keep in Mind when Formulating the Business Plan

Never limit your plan to just the budget. Most often, people prepare the financial projections but ignore other areas like market and competitor analysis, and industry research. By doing this, they essentially prepare an incomplete plan and find it tough to manage the business later. When preparing your business plan, keep the following points in mind -

Overoptimistic forecasts do more damage than good - The financial and sales forecasts need to be fact-based. There is a chance that entrepreneurs, in the enthusiasm of starting a new business, ignore the negatives (e.g., competition threat and market share), and come up with inflated numbers. This can form a base to an unrealistic target, which can lead to disappointment or even losses as you may tend to over-invest in proportion to the inflated projections.

You must place onus on risks - Even the best business ideas can fail if risks are not given due importance. If you do not consider the risks, you would obviously not have strong contingency plans or budgets. The flexibility of your business would be greatly limited if you do not consider them. Take time and brainstorm to identify as many risks as possible. Develop contingency plans for each one of these. This plan will prepare you for any unexpected downs in the business.

Market research is vital - You might make the mistake of assuming that you know your target audience well and skip analyzing it. You will be surprised at the amount of new information you would gather about your potential customers during an analysis. When you base your targeting strategies on thorough research, they prove to be very effective.

Emotions work on everyone – There’s only so far that facts, figures and logic will get you in creating a positive response about your business plan. A good idea is to use facts and logic in a manner that appeals to the emotion. You could for instance, use real-life examples or short stories to bring your arguments to life.

The following must be avoided – When preparing your plan, avoid an overload of text. Use numbers, figures, graphs and lists to make your plan easy on the eye. Excessive focus on the product or service is another thing you want to avoid. Seasoned investors want to judge your whole business based on the plan, and not just your offerings.

It is easy to overlook the execution part of the plan, when writing down your startup idea and growth plans in detail. However, without significant consideration about the time and money you will need to develop your product and place it in the market, your business idea will fail to attract the right audience.

Chapter 2

Designing a Business Flowchart

A flowchart is necessary to understand how fundamental aspects of each area within a business will flow, such as incoming phone calls, sales, etc. Flowcharts can prove to be excellent training tools for employees so that everyone has a common and clear vision as to how particular processes are handled in your business.

The quality of the flowchart that you employ decides whether it takes you from base to peak or from cradle to grave.

Each step should identify procedures that enhance the company’s ability to monitor and measure the results. At the same time, you should be able to implement new solutions to create a better flow within a specific area for desired results.

The best flowchart is the one that a business owner can see, feel and follow easily. Simplicity is best in this area. The quality of a flowchart that you employ decides whether it takes you from base to peak or from cradle to grave.

Understanding Flowcharts

A flowchart is a graphical representation of shapes and symbols which give you a visual map so that you can document a set of steps or procedures to accomplish the set goal based on specific business rules. A good flowchart enables a person to effectively understand the process so that it can be followed.

Analysis of the flowchart enables any reader to follow the steps sequentially and only take those paths, which are specified when encountered with a situation. It is a way through which complex flows are divided down to basic procedures, mapped, and then connected to give the bigger picture. It is a source which can be referred by the employees repeatedly for better understanding of the processes