Does the idea of a traditional plan for your start-up business give you cold sweats and sleepless nights? What you really need is a practical business plan to enable you to launch a new company without fuss.
It is indeed time to kill the traditional business plan and to replace it with a more user-friendly option – one that consists of a single paragraph.
Because most of don’t have too much to say when starting-up a business, a simple, fuss-free business plan will do the job adequately.
Plan of action:
A one-paragraph start-up plan is perfect – your entire business concept in a nutshell and boiled down into a simple, digestible business strategy is the way forward.
Traditional business planning that spelt out in detail a tactic based on a supposition before the business has been tried and tested is not a hands-on solution.
Besides, as you and your business grow, you can always add more information to your existing business plan.
This is how it’s done:
Answers to important questions is imperative – these are about your business and prospective customers.
This is what you ought to include in your practical business plan:
- What product or service does your business provide in today’s world?
- How does your business or product provide the product or service at present?
- How will consumers use your service or product as it exists now?
- How does your business make money at the present time?
- Who is your target market?
- What marketing strategies have you in mind for your start-up business?
- How do you stand out from your competition?
- Are there secondary and tertiary clients – if so how will you proceed in targeting these?
Once you have answered these and placed them in a paragraph you have your first draft. This is not the final draft, though – rather think of this as a template for the beginning of your business strategy.
You need to tick all the boxes:
Field-testing all your assumptions to learn whether they are true, false or not complete will make your model a more functional action-plan that you can revise and correct regularly.
Break up your sentences in your original paragraph into bite-sized pieces and convert these into the real deal.
Putting your plan into action is the very next step:
Once each task has been completed it is important to evaluate you findings one by one. Revising your draft plan is important, and don’t be afraid to discard what does not work for you.
Continuously look for ways and means to improve your checklists, because doing this will keep you relevant and at the top of your game allowing you to produce a series of well-defined blue-prints for each and every aspect of your business.
Your one-paragraph plan should never be stagnant – it ought to be a living and breathing manuscript that has a synergetic relationship with you and your business – keeping it active is important because if it dies so could your start-up business.
