10 questions business plan
By Steven D. Peterson, Peter E. Jaret, Barbara Findlay Schenck. The good news is that there are no hard and fast rules. In fact, no two plans look exactly alike.
6 Critical Questions Your Business Plan Must Answer
Even if you have defined objectives, use your answers to these 10 questions to help you fine-tune your efforts and grow your business successfully. By now, you've set a working direction for the year, established clear-cut objectives. Your first-iteration plan to reach them should be in place. This now seems like an ideal time to rethink the whole thing, doesn't it?
After all, one of the effects of internet time is that plans are subject to change just as soon as - or perhaps even before - they are written. Along these lines of thinking, perhaps there are some items you missed. Maybe there are issues you didn't have time to consider, or even things your mind touched on, but quickly passed over to deal with more urgent and pressing events.
If you are off-cycle, and on the verge of a new period, you can use this exercise ex ante, rather than ex post. To help you stimulate your neural pathways and hopefully create an idea or two, I offer the following thoughts for your consideration. These "considerations" are not sequenced in order of importance.
I think they are all important. Most companies today plan months out, calling anything beyond that "vision. How much have you thought about what you will accomplish this decade? What will be your company's impact on the millennium? OK - perhaps millennium is too far out.
What about the century? You may say you have more pressing fish to fry. Your investors would like to see increased returns sooner than that. While this might be true enough, taking the long view can inform the short view, leading to greater returns for years to come.
What do you see when you take the long view? How is their world affected by the dramatic increases in connectivity and the compression of time? What are you doing to understand their changing environment - their changing business issues? What are you doing to improve your customer's business under these slippery conditions? To take it one step further, what do your customers' customers want? While you are at it, you might stop to consider how your suppliers' needs are changing? Could those changes open up new opportunities for you, or darkly portend changes downstream totally derailing your business model?
What about your distributors? Is their world shifting? Can you both benefit? As they say, your mileage may vary from individual to individual but everyone has the responsibility to go some distance, to make something valuable happen.
Not everyone will make good on that implied promise. Who isn't making the cut? Should you be doing something about it? You may think it beneficent to provide that bottom percent with a paying job - don't. It isn't. The non-performers know who they are, but they won't cut the cord on their own.
Do what you can to help them reach the bar, but if after a while they don't make it, set them free to find an environment in which they can succeed.
Free up your own resources for people who make a difference. How are you figuring out what those problems are going to be, way out there on the time horizon? Because the solution you sell today should certainly address today's problems, but the solutions on today's drawing board better not.
Who in your organization is responsible for trend-tracking and forecasting? Are you building scenarios for the future? What about prospect focus groups, or some other market-based feedback mechanism? Who is your resident futurist? For most people this is a strange question - we rarely spend time thinking about our own beliefs.
The collection of beliefs you hold about your business - what the Germans call Weltanschauung - is decisive in most of the choices you make. How much risk to take. What's risky and what isn't. What projects and initiatives to undertake. What kind of resources you need and whom to hire. Cooperate or compete. How to treat your team. What your customers should expect from you. How hard do you expect people to work? All these decisions stem from your beliefs, and it will help you to make them explicit.
Once you surface those beliefs, you can start to distinguish which are useful beliefs and which are not. What is the benefit of a particular belief? Is this belief relevant to your current world, or is it a holdover from some past part of life? Then, when you are ready, you can experiment with new beliefs.
Yes - you've set a plan in motion, and you are taking steps toward its achievement. But what roadblocks may rise up to stop you? What things could get in your way - foreseen and unforeseen? I know, if it's unforeseen how are you going to see it? Use your imagination, that's the point of this exercise. Rank these obstacles in terms of likelihood, then rank them in terms of severity. Consider how you might deal with them if they come up. The value of this is a like the Boy Scouts, you are better prepared; b you may illuminate issues you have been trying to sweep under the rug; and c you just may invent a whole new approach to get where you are going, and it just might be better than what you are doing now.
What would you do now if you had additional resources - and should the lack of resources be stopping you? What, if you were sure it would be successful, would you jump on right away? What would you begin immediately, if your resources were limitless?
Yes, limitless can be relative. What are you betting the future of your company on? What would you be willing to bet the future of your company on? Which of these issues are you dealing with, which ones are on the backburner, and which ones aren't even in the kitchen? What are the processes you use to deal with these issues? Which issues are you ignoring, or hoping will go away? What breakthroughs might be possible by addressing or resolving issues in the latter category?
Where are you "resolving" issues by compromising? What possibilities are available by refusing to compromise, or by breaking your compromises? What old stories or old ways of looking at things make these compromises seem inevitable? Where could new technologies either material, virtual, or societal be applied to break these compromises? The definition of sacrifice is giving up something of value for something of even greater value. Did you intend to give up that thing of value, or is it a thoughtless byproduct of your other choices?
Do not dismiss this lightly. In your business there are a number of priority-conflicting critical success factors. These include profitability, product development, new sales, customer satisfaction, recruiting and retention, revenue growth, sufficient capital - which one gets the most attention? And in this operating cycle - will each area get the attention it needs? Even in a lower position of priority, these areas cannot be neglected. What isn't getting done that needs to be done and how are you going to do it?
I don't just mean increasing shareholder wealth that simply won't inspire your people to greatness. What besides that - a given - is the purpose of your company.
Purpose is not something you invent, it is there already - you have to uncover it. Why do you come to work each day? What do you hope to accomplish in the long run?
What about your executive team? Your individual employees - why do they come? What do they think they are doing each day? Do you know? Have you bothered to find out?
What is the operating budget?. Who are your customers?.
Never underestimate the importance of your business plan. But finding the right answers to the right questions is critical if you want to lay the groundwork for a stable business and attract sufficient attention from investors. Chances are, there are multiple businesses out there who are already serving the crucial need you outlined from question one.
Therefore, I have listed 10 essential questions for you to answer before starting your business. When I think about starting a business, I often think about going on a vacation.
Even if you have defined objectives, use your answers to these 10 questions to help you fine-tune your efforts and grow your business successfully. By now, you've set a working direction for the year, established clear-cut objectives.
Business Growth Planning: 10 Questions to Ask to Grow Your Business
Every small business needs a business plan. Your business plan should be a living, breathing portfolio that evolves along with your company. By making sure your business plan answers the right questions. Below are six crucial points that you should address with your business plan. Instead, your business plan should highlight what is different, exciting, or inspiring about your product or service. An element of innovation will underline the viability of your concept, and help to persuade investors that you can succeed.
10 Questions Your Business Plan Should Answer
Research of successful entrepreneurs has documented that successful small business people have certain common characteristics. This checklist cannot predict success, but it can give you an idea of whether you will have a head start or a handicap with which to work. Seek extra training and support, and enlist the help from a skilled team of business advisors such as accountants, bankers, attorneys and SCORE counselors. Small business owners have many things in common. Below are some of the qualities you will need to be successful. Compare your skills and expertise with others who are successful in similar businesses. Can you duplicate and surpass the capability of other successful businesses? Review business journals, trade magazines and other comparative studies that identify the requirements to operate the business. From that information, derive a formula for the skills and traits you plan to incorporate into the business operation.
Crafting the perfect business plan is often a challenge for any number of reasons. However, one of the biggest challenges standing in the way of a good business plan is the fact that oftentimes, no two investors, judges or members of your audience are looking for the same thing when evaluating a business plan.
October 13, It lets you use your voice to send messages, dial calls, schedule meetings and set reminders. Apple stresses that "Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back.
Big Questions Every Business Plan Should Answer
A friend of mine is fond of reminding her clients that they are in the lawn business not the grass seed business. You do what you do so your customer can have a great lawn, grass seed is merely the means to get there. This builds on the previous question, and should be a concise statement that everyone in your business knows by heart. Who makes the decision to buy your product or service? Who needs your product or service? Who have been your customers in the past and who will they be in the future? Is it the lush green attractive lawn, or the prestige of having the best looking lawn on the street, or a durable play area for the dogs and kids? Talk to the customer and research what the customer values. This requires more analysis, evaluating and tabulating to discover who needs to hear your message. Are you offering the products or services your customer needs or wants? Are you offering products or services nobody wants, or perhaps nobody will want tomorrow? This is really a question about innovation. Customers need to know what you offer; your number one job is creating customers. How do you drive them to you site or storefront?
10 Crucial Business Questions To Ask Yourself
You may be asking yourself this very question. However, instead of trying to answer this broad question, I suggest instead you ask yourself the following list of 12 more specific questions. After you ask yourself these questions, I highly recommend you check out our guide presenting how to start your own business in 5 steps. However, considering only one simple question like that in starting a business could lead you to a decision that you may regret. Small business ideas are not created equal and some of them — Restaurants for example — have a higher likelihood to fail. Instead, I would suggest that you probe deeper by asking yourself additional questions relating to whether or not you should start a business.
