Planning is an important way of getting set for your business success. And one practical way of planning your business is by having a Business Plan. If it’s not in the plan, it may not happen.
Planning gives you the edge to start any business with the end in mind. TD Jakes famously said, ‘If you plan it right with a pencil, you can build it right with steel. Pencils are easier to correct than welding!’ If your business ideas are not convincing on paper, you could be driving at a terrible speed with your eyes closed.
If you can’t commit to writing them down, you perhaps won’t commit yourself to follow it through. ‘The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen,’ so said Lee Iacocca.
A plan provides concise articulation of the journey you are about to embark on, and ways to navigate the terrain and doubles your chances for success, especially when you are starting a business. According to H. Stanley Judd, ‘A good plan is like a roadmap. It shows the final destination and usually the best way to get there.’.
A Business Plan is a living document that precisely defines your business, identifies your business objectives, describes your strategies to reach those objectives. It is a dynamic planning tool for preparing, modeling, budgeting, structuring, forecasting, strategising, and attracting investments, among other things.
Every business idea should first be thought out on paper with facts and figures – more like a research-centred planning that covers your market, product or service line, sales, among other things. The more information you have, the better your plan will be.
Once you have a full understanding of your product, competition, and market, the better. We do market research so as to identify a viable, preferably underserved market, and to determine market demand (what it wants most and it’s willing to pay for). Then, we align our mission, vision, and purpose to meeting those needs.
Your Business Plan is like the business design that gives you a good idea of what your finished work should look like. When you plan, you are creating a very specific blueprint to assist you to make sound business decisions that would make your business prosper. Imagine what your business will look like in three years. Your plan becomes the blueprint to make it a reality.
The act of planning forces you to think through whether your business is viable and what it will take to make it a success. By being specific about your business needs and objectives, thinking more strategically to grow the business becomes easier.
In a nutshell, planning is important, for whatever we do in life and business and it’s an on-going process of setting goals, deciding when and how to accomplish them, and determining how best to accomplish them.
Planning is a critical part of preparation, and preparation is winning. Just like what it means, the business plan helps you to plan ahead. Planning ahead can mean the difference between business success and failure.
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