Now that you have decided to start a business venture, the next step after choosing the business you plan on venturing into is to develop a business plan.
According to Wikipedia “a business plan is a formal written document containing the goals of a business, the methods for attaining those goals, and the time-frame for the achievement of the goals.” I call it your roadmap to the business destination you desire for it shows your plans. It is a detailed guide to how much progress you want for your business and how to get the desired progress.
In this article, I will be sharing with you the reasons you must have a well-developed business plan.
Here are five reasons you must have a business plan.
1. It enables you to see the whole business:
A well-developed business plan helps you see beyond the current state of your business. It helps you see beyond the capital and stock available.
2. It helps set strategic focus:
A business plan helps create a strategic plan that not only defines a company’s goals but also utilizes those goals to take advantage of available business opportunities.
The plan allows businesses to focus on a particular niche in the marketplace. This makes sales, advertising and customer management more effective.
Setting a strategic focus helps a business provide better, more targeted products and/or services to their clients.
3. It assists in setting priority
The entrepreneur in you is eager to dive right into business. However, having a business plan can help prioritize tasks. By looking at the big picture of your business, you can decide which challenges to tackle first. A business plan could also help you choose which tasks to save for later.
4. It helps in the creation of a marketing road-map
Marketing is what drives sales. Without sales, you don’t make the money required to stay in business long-term. A good business plan helps define the direction for a company’s marketing plan.
Marketing provides a deeper understanding of the marketplace, business offered and positioning, which in turn enables more thorough and confident recommendations and planning.
A good business plan answers the question of, ‘how is a business is going to reach its customers?’, ‘how will a business retain them?’, ‘what is the advertising budget of the business?’, ‘what price will be an ideal charge?’, etc.
5. It helps secure an ideal team:
A business plan helps secure an ideal team. Your business plan inspires employees and management that a business idea is sound and that the business is poised to achieve its strategic goals. Now, as your business grows, you need to continually align and motivate your team as they’ll do most of the work and in turn, record a business’s success.
A business plan provides a roadmap for your staffing needs, and thus helps to ensure smoother expansion.
6. It develops accountability:
A good business plan sets clear expectations and then follows up on results. What it does is that, it compares results with expectations. People on a team can only be held accountable only if management actually does the work of tracking results and communicating them, to those responsible.
7. It helps in the creation of Milestones:
Every business needs to track their milestones immediately they launch out. Milestones are what you use to convert your business strategy and tactics into action.
Just like a milestone on the side of a road marks how far you’ve gone and how well you’re on track, a milestone in business tracks your growth and implementation plans to ensure you’re making progress
8. It helps in the application of support or funding
Here’s one good thing about having a business plan. A business plan aids in discovering whether an idea can actually lead to a profitable business. Lenders will want to know the business you plan on starting, will make enough money for you to be able to pay back a loan or other forms of investment. If you’re not serious about your business, why should potential investors be?
Remember that a business plan should grow and evolve along with your business for it is an important part of your whole journey and not just the beginning. There might be need to revisit and rethink as you journey through. A good business plan might not guarantee success, but it can go a long way toward reducing the odds of failure.
