Do You Have a Game Plan?

Doing private as well as volunteer advisory work for SCORE, I’ve had numerous inquiries for help on the development of an effective business plan. There seems to be a lot of confusion as to the importance, purpose, value and application in having a well thought out plan of action for moving your business forward.

·         One of the keys to putting together a well conceived plan is to make it yours. I have read a couple of thousand plans over the years and the majority are geared towards impressing service providers such as a bank, leasing companies, etc…

·         Many of those providers have read hundreds of plans and will be the first to tell you that trying to impress them with an inaccurate game plan is a mistake. This is especially true when it comes to the numbers and financial projections.

I will be concentrating on game/business plans over the next few months. Always remember it needs to be a plan that is a working document to guide you towards business growth.

The Missing Link in a Game Plan

          A situation that continuously reoccurs in the growth plan for an emerging business is the lack of a well thought out marketing and sales process. Many Entrepreneurs have a vast amount of product knowledge and a pretty good understanding of the industry that they are going to represent. Many times I find that the weaknesses are taking it to a market place and positioning a company to be competitive in the respective market. This seems to be the largest challenge. Keep in mind that until someone sells something there is nothing for anyone to do. I talked with a family owned company the other day in which there are four principles. Three of them have a considerable amount of industry knowledge but no one in the firm wants to tackle the marketing and sales. There needs to be a strong presence in the sales and marketing field in order to for a company to be successful.