Strategic | Business | Financial | Marketing | Project | Tactical

Business Planning

Once you have a Vision, and a Strategy for how to achieve your Vision, you will need a plan to detail how you will achieve your goals. The two primary components of a Business Plan are the Marketing Plan and the Financial Plan. These two components are best developed jointly as every marketing strategy has financial implications both for positive and negative cash flow.

Write your Business Plan with the reader in mind. If the document is for an investor to review it is written from a different perspective and with different emphasis than for a bank or other lender.

Can we hire someone to write our Business Plan for us?

There are many people who will write a plan for you. However, you are the team that will be expected to explain the plan to your investors and lenders and to implement the plan. If you do not know and live this plan it is a wasted investment. If you received your financing based upon a plan and then file it in a drawer and ignore it, you run risk of, at minimum, alienating your investors and lenders.

How can we write a Business Plan?

A good coach, with years of experience preparing successful business plans, can lead you through this process. Not do it for you— but help you learn how do it for yourselves. They will be a good editor, point you to areas where your plan needs work, give you ideas on how you can improve it and keep you to a schedule to make sure it is completed in a timely fashion.

The one area that may require outside expertise is the financial projections. A good coach can help you prepare numbers based upon your assumptions and decisions and raw data.