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Business Planning: Why People Avoid Doing One and What WILL Happen When You Do OneTip! Unless the company is blessed with an unlimited amount of start up capital, the entrepreneur must base his business planning on cash flow for the initial years. Uncollected receivables, sales growth, market share and “paper” profits are not going to ensure the survival of the new business. - Too busy, no time, got to get out there and DO IT.
- Have to go fight a fire
- Don't have enough business, got to go out there and generate some.
The excuses run on and on. In reality, setting down long enough to plan and discover the gotcha's will prevent fire fighting and free up a lot of time, making your job easier, and even will allow for additional planning which will make it even easier yet.Let me give you an example from an engineer's perspective. As an engineer in a previous career, before moving into executive coaching and business coaching, I discovered some interesting things that apply to business planning. As an want-a-be engineer in college almost every design I ever did worked. However, when I got out in the real world and a boss would ask "Can you design XYZ?" I would answer, "Sure, No problem. I know how," while pointing to the empty space between my ears.
Paper Design Compared to Written Business Plan Of course, as soon as I started writing it down on paper I'd discover something very important. I'd look at all of the different pieces on the paper and immediately see that the first section just didn't quite line up with the 2nd, the 2nd wasn't a perfect fit to the 3rd, and so on. I had told my boss I knew how so I had to get this rat's nest working. After tweaking section 1 to align with 2, 2 with 3, etc. finally I had something on a piece of paper that should work. Remember I had said I knew how while pointing between my ears? Are you running your business from "between your ears?" Paper Design Converted to Real World When I built one it almost never worked. Well, the longer I did this the more often it did work, but it rarely worked perfectly. The point is that I had made an assumption about the real world that wasn't just exactly right. So, now I'm going back and forth between the real world and the paper design until the real world example worked. Has that happened to you in your business? Have you written something down, tried to do it in the real world, then found it needed some additional tweaking? Or is it still in your head and you haven't discovered those things yet? Wait a Minute -- Look at All of These Opportunities to Make It Better And, that is when another aha moment hit me pretty hard. There is no self respecting engineer in the world, that is truly ready to release his product to production when production is screaming for it because now he is setting there with a paper design, and a working example, and he's now discovering all of the opportunities. "Well, let's see. If I tweak this section it'll be cheaper to build. If I do this, it will put out more power. If I ..it will be easier to operate." You get the point. In business, when you have the key business measurements in front of you, have you gotten a chance to see where you could "increase profits by 2-3 times," "discover that by changing a market segment that you could increase revenues by 10 times within the next month" What opportunities are laying out there that you are missing if you haven't been doing that. Are You Running Your Business in Your Head? So, how many people do you know that are running their business "in their head."Tip! Much of the apparent drudgery of business planning comes from the poor, if any, processes adopted in business or corporate planning. Business planning does not have to be complex, but it does take process, thought and data. When I get them to put it on paper they find all of the reasons why it isn't working like it should. Then they tweak it and go try it out in the world. It doesn't always work as expected. So they try again, and again until it works pretty darn good. But, suddenly, "Gee if I changed this...... and I've seen companies increase their revenue 10 times in one week. But just a few weeks before that they said "I know how to run my business. I don't have time to write down a plan." Let's put it this way "when you start managing the plan you'll see your results go up by multiples. You'll see your efficiencies go up by multiples. You'll see new opportunities every day that you've not seen before. I'll Guarantee it. Strategic Planning done right will help multiply business results....PERIOD. 80% of our small business clients double their entire business in weeks, and our larger clients find opportunities to multiply a workgroup output, or division quickly. Tip! Strategic business planning will take you from thinking about starting a business to actually doing the things you need to do to get a business going. The longer you put off your strategic business planning process, the longer it is until you launch. Alan says that a business without a strategic plan has no idea where they are going to end up, no plan for getting there, and can't find the opportunities that he will guarantee will multiplye business results in a matter of weeks. Alan Boyer --Helping People and Companies Worldwide Reach Further Than They EVER Thought Possible....FASTER http://www.leaders-perspective.com |
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